A Moment To Be Real
by AlreadyPainfullyGone
Summary: Au. Dean is a janitor at a religious highschool, Castiel is a preachers son, but he's not as good as you'd expect. Dean's rather surprised too. Rebellious underage Cas/Janitor Dean. WARNINGS FOR INCEST.
1. Chapter 1

_Never had a man who can_

_Always had to do it for myself,_

_Never had a master plan,_

_That involved anybody else._

_Who needs monogamy? When there's no doubt and you don't ask?_

_Who needs compromise?_

_All the good boys they don't cut it_

_All the nice boys Christian smiles..._

Castiel's father is the preacher for their town. He attends services held by his father, goes to St. James's where everyone knows his father and he's been a member of the chorus, charitable society and chapel service since he was ten.

Castiel has about had his fucking fill of the lord.

The good reverend has no idea what demon has gotten inside of his son, but his good boy, his only son, has become a stranger to him. A volatile, angry young man with the moral compass of a street walker and the tastes of an inner city gutter rat. Michael Novak has no idea why his son has become so...crazed with hedonism - he just wishes it would stop – like a violent storm in midsummer, clearing to reveal the familiar blue sky.

Castiel doesn't share this opinion.

He's woken up. The first sixteen years of his life have been spent under his father's thumb, under the lords mighty thumb. He's finally slithered out from being crushed, from being held flush to toil bound earth, and he has discovered that he's a flexible being of flesh – as oddly sensuous of motion and thought as the serpent on the cover of his Father's bible, and now etched in dark ink around his wrist. One of his first experiments in body modification.

Between the age of sixteen and seventeen. The age of 'upset' to his father. Castiel has acquired the serpent, a bit of Chinese nonsense on the back of one shoulder and a small butterfly on the back of his foot (that one was owed to the second of his vices – drinking.)

Drinking had come along with the 'self mutilation' (and how melodramatic of his father to call it so). Castiel had a talent, quite unexplored, of getting people to sell him practically anything without ID, simply by making them very uncomfortable.

Drugs required no ID however, and from its humble beginnings in borrowed tokes and half tabs of someone's mothers valium passed around at a party – his drug habit had grown quite varied and extensive.

Castiel the chorister was gone, thank fuck for that. In the mirror now he saw only a skinny seventeen year old in faded jeans and a khaki vest with a canvas jacket over the top. Tattooed, pierced (left ear twice, navel once – and that had hurt like a son of a bitch) glassy eyed and pale under his scruff (abundant for such a young kid) and below his shaggy swatch of dark hair. He wasn't really going for 'attractive' if anything he was looking to turn people away. He wanted to look, if he had an aim at all – like someone who wasn't a preachers son.

He didn't want to act like one either.

It was his sharpness and sudden alterations in wardrobe that had led to his involvement with the so called 'sinners' an interesting bunch all told. He'd gotten into their liquor, their recreational drugs and heavy petting - and found it rather dull in the grand scheme of perversions and 'thou shalt not's'.

He was a little disappointed at the time.

Now though, now he's sunk lower even than they.

Or, soared higher...depending rather on your perspective.

He's known to the dropouts and burn outs as a 'head case'. To the casually sexed up and strung out school top set as 'a freak'. His father thinks he's a sinner, and Dean...

Well, he'll get to Dean.

A time for everything. And this is definitely Castiel's time.

To get things in order, first there came the new look, then the slow trickle of invites to new and interesting places from new and boring people, then the drinking, the drugs, the sex with some of the plainer girls – in spare bedrooms at parties, mainly fooling around, it was only later that he met the kind of girl who would go all the way after hopping the wall to the town park at night. Then there came boys – often stupid, or mean, selfish or unhappy – but they were defiantly a discovery. Castiel liked the things he did with them, a lot.

Then came his personal excursions. Nights spent sneaking out of his bedroom to go sleep on the beach, to swim naked in the sea come morning. He'd watch the sun set or rise, high out of his mind and contemplate the bloody ribbons of the suns slashes wrists on the water, the moon, high and cold like she'd driven him to it. Melodramatic, slightly hallucinatory things that half scared and half exhilarated him.

And on the seventh day of his own personal creation – something somewhere said 'let there be Dean'.

And Lo –

Dean Winchester was new to their high school. He had a father and a brother, the use of an old muscle car and a leather jacket.

Castiel's interest, lulled by the lack of anything new to take or experience or do – was instantly piqued.

Though no one else quite saw any potential in their new janitor.

But then, as Castiel had often thought as a child – people seldom really _saw _anything.

He didn't really plan his move on Dean. He never planned anything after all, neither was he a user of what some might call 'seduction techniques'. His propositions, both received and given, were mostly drunken things which involved either a hand sliding up the thigh of another, equally drunk person, or someone mouthing 'Hey, wanna do it?' against someone else's ear.

It was simple, direct, and involved the minimal understanding of human interactions.

Castiel excelled at it.

He also had no idea if Dean was gay, bi or in any way curious. Castiel didn't know if he was Dean's type, or if he was in any way attractive to Dean – or indeed to anyone else. He was a poor judge of people and the way in which people chose to telegraph themselves was a mystery to him.

However - he was, if anything could be said of him, unafraid of rejection, and ready to take a shot at just about anything or anyone.

Their school had a strict uniform policy, which Castiel frequently stretched to its limits, but in the base of it, his clothing was the same as everyone else's, at least in school hours. So it was that he approached Dean, busily swabbing the hall floors after the last period of the day. Castiel was wearing his school uniform - black slacks, white shirt, grey sweater vest and blazer. He was wearing his crucifix as usual – his mother had given it to him before her death, and he would never remove it, even for the sake of defiance against his father.

It would be inaccurate to say that Castiel propositioned Dean, or even that he approached him. It was after all Dean who made the first move. He stops mopping as Castiel walks towards him, well paced out black shoes ringing on the tiles. Castiel stopped and stared at him, looking at his shortish, brownish hair, his body in its overalls – strong and larger than life, the T-shirt underneath sticky with sweat.

Dean acknowledged the once over with one of his own, much more experienced and smoother. He was surprised at the kid's attention, obviously, he looked like the standard cookie cutter catholic school kid. But...Dean swallowed a mouthful of saliva that had come seemingly from nowhere, the kid was hot – probably nearly legal – and looking at him with interest.

Dean Winchester was a man who didn't know the meaning of the phrase 'looking a gift horse in the mouth'.

He was more of a 'take it and run' kind of guy.

"Look. At. You...in your, uniform." Dean murmurs softly, letting each word drop from his lips like a breath of thick smoke, mopping the floor in slow easy motions as he does so. He's casual, he has deniability.

Castiel shifts nonchalantly from one foot to the other.

"They make us wear it."

Dean looks him over again.

"So would I." Moving into the open, desire uncurling like a fleshy flower – all thick scarlet tongues and rich, black stamens.

Dean is surprised that this doesn't elicit a blush. Not that he makes a habit of chatting up barely legal religious types, but he expected something. He's had a few closet cases in his twenty six years - a few churchgoing basket cases too. The blush was expected, especially in a boy this cream white and good looking.

Instead he looks at him contemplatively – not sexy or assuming, just...like he's considering something.

"Really?" the kid says, rolling the idea around some more to see what it tastes like.

And just like that, Dean's hooked. He's just moved to town, Sam's just started school and they're in that wonderful stage in between the promise and the disappointment, where his father is still sober. He hates that his life runs like a fucking depressing clock – but his Dad's as regular as a timepiece's Swiss woodsman – popping up drunk at regular intervals. Marking off the time. So yeah, Dean really doesn't need the trouble. There are guys out there, more than a handful, who'd gladly have him for the night, maybe two. Who wouldn't need his name or cause him grief or land him in jail for statutory...but then, they couldn't hold a candle to this – the boy who's all dark on light, huge eyes and spooked deer speculation.

"Oh yeah." He says, and he lets it go breathy and rough and it's pretty much a sure thing that it's going to hook the kid.

The boy (Dean was right to peg him at seventeen – he's sure of it now) moves towards him, kind of graceful and careless at the same time, stopping an inch from him, black shoes haloed by the slowly receding mop puddle. His hand comes up, finds the tab of Dean's overalls, open to midway down his chest already, the dark blue canvas frayed and stained against the relatively clean white tee. He pulls the zipper down slowly, and the sound of a zipper has never been so obscene. The dark haired boy wets his lower lip, reaching up to push the overall from Dean's shoulders, and Dean just stands there and lets it happen – feels the smaller, warm hands strip the material from him until he's clad in the overalls only to the waist, his arms exposed in their short sleeves, sweat drying in the air.

The kid breaths out and in, unsteadily as his hands reach up again, trailing from the cotton of Dean's sweat dampened shoulders, all the way down his arms. One of his hands closes around Dean's wrist and then he's stepping forwards, closing the gap to press his face to the side of Dean's neck, standing on the tips of his wet shoes to reach. Dean feels him breathe in the scent of his skin, and the resultant sigh that follows is ragged, and wrecked, and slides straight down to his cock.

The tip of a slim, pink tongue – which Dean can picture in blinding Technicolor glory – reproduced and utilised in flat screen displayed pornography – licks gently at his jugular vein. Dean shivers – like a fucking virgin in the dark back seat of a car on prom night. The kid moans, just a little, a small sound of desire as his cloth covered body lines up against Dean's – not moving, not pressing, just resting, so that the layers of fabric brush softly.

That sound means Dean's misjudged him.

This isn't a kid suffering from lack of conviction. The boy is sure. So damn sure and gagging for it. So when Dean's hands come up to grab the kids waist, he can't exactly be blamed for responding to such an erotic advance.

The boy's mouth comes up to his viper quick, sucking the fullness of his lower lip into his mouth like a segment of fruit. Dean growls his surprise, the quick hot pressure of the boy's tongue and the soft sucking of his mouth on his lower lip, persistently returning, is intense if unrefined. It feels like being wanted, like being devoured.

The kiss is slow and deep and bracing as a shot of lighter fluid whisky, Dean takes the lead in things, and the kid matches him stroke for stroke, tongue toying with his, lips and teeth catching, shifting angle and pressing deeper until neither of them are exactly steady, but buzzing, jittery and hot with promise of more. Unified by that one thought – More of you. More. Now.

Dean pushes the kid back, snatching up his wrist and pulling his unresisting body along the corridor and to the closet at the end. Dean opens the door. It's a narrow space, walled on all sides by shelves of rags, solvents, paper towel bales and plastic sacks – but it'll do for what he has in mind, something quick and dirty and searing to work the edge off of his day. The kid steps in ahead of him, pressing himself to the back wall as Dean takes one last look up and down the deserted corridor, letting the door close at his back as he slips inside, darkness closing over them like a gloved fist.

Dean inches forwards through the dusty shadow of the closet, feeling the heat rolling off of the student's body before he feels the first brush of cloth meeting cloth – rough canvas on soft wool and cotton. He reaches and his hands find the narrow hips in front of him, seemingly carving them from the darkness. His fingers brush over full buttocks, hidden by neatly creased uniform pants. He presses in towards the cleft, rubbing firm fingers in to the flesh until he's rewarded with a whine, a plaintive cry for more attention. Dean presses his whole body against the slimmer one in front of him, feeling his partner's breath hitch and then flow in the shape of a word.

"Winchester..." it's expectant, shivering with need, with knowledge. Dean's hand wades through the darkness and touches the face, hovering moonlike beneath his own.

"You have a name?"

"Cas." It's not a name, not a real one – the full identity of the boy who'd approached him like a hunter coming out of the forest – sure and calm and ready. But Dean swallows it down anyway, sucking those three letters into himself along with the boy's lower lip, and his groan of pleasure.

Dean's already adjusted his opinion of Cas twice since meeting him, he'd thought him a curious religious boy – shy and reserved but ultimately wanting. But no one kissed like that, came to him like that, without knowing exactly what they wanted. Without a little experience. So Dean had thought him perhaps a little less naive, the kind of boy who had few options in terms of other boys and who had picked him out as one of his own.

The third time he has to re-evaluate, in the dark of the closet, comes when he's reaching up under the boys sweater and shirt, skating his hand over the planes of his flat, soft stomach in preparation for a dive under the waistband - and his finger encounters metal.

One ball of skin warm metal in the cavity of Cas's navel, the other just above, smaller but no less obvious. It's a plain piercing, gun metal grey and the cheapest – the only one Castiel could afford – but Dean's can't see it, only feel the hard, insistent nub of it. He tugs on it a little, just to check if it's real, the skin around it shifts with his movement, the piercing definitely genuine. Cas moans slightly, his head resting against Dean's shoulder, as Dean fondles the pierced skin.

"Holy shit." Is all Dean can say, breath running out of his control, straining his voice in surprise.

Cas takes his hand and pushes it down under the waistband of his slacks, moaning again as hot fingers come into contact with his sex, urgently awaiting attention.

After that Dean's mind goes off the rails. He can form no opinion of the boy who's arching against him, hands scrabbling urgently at Dean's fly before he gets inside and pumps his erection swiftly, competently, his other hand clutching Dean's shoulder for balance. Cas licks the line of Dean's jaw, nipping his way back to his mouth and filling him up with sounds of pleasure as he thrusts into Dean's hand, his own fingers busily rubbing and stroking Dean's own length.

Dean is no stranger to this, and he quickly picks up a pace that suits him, that Cas mirrors. Responding to every groan and grunt of pleasure, every husky _yes _and _ugh_ and _oh... _that spills from his partners mouth. He redoubles his efforts every time he feels Cas buck or twitch, feeling himself stampeding for the edge, body already seizing up with it. Cas is a quick study, similarly adjusting to Dean's reactions, until he's rubbing his thumb over the head of Dean's prick so often that the older man's knees start to buckle, his vision whiting out in glorious waves of insensibility, his lower body flooding and pulsing with heat and good and tight...

Dean shoves the boy up against the back wall as he comes into Cas's hand. The shelves behind him shake, bottles fall and roll over to land on the floor. He can smell lemon pledge and dust and the hot musk of his own scent – the sweat of the boy plastered against him. Dean shoves his free hand down the back of Cas's uniform slacks, grasping a handful of resilient flesh, the roundness of the bare skin filling his palm perfectly. He squeezes and the boy groans, rubbing urgently into Dean's palm as he trembles all over, small pulses of fluid leaving him to coat Dean's palm messily and fill the closet anew with the scent of come and the sound of panting. Slowly the boy's former cries of pleasure, of release, lower themselves to soft rumbles of satisfaction and then just the heavy breathing of one who has exerted themselves most pleasantly. Dean leans heavily on the wall with one arm, freshly extracted from the boy's clothing, his other hand has seized on a handful of paper towels from the shelf, which he uses now to clean his palm and himself before passing them over to Cas to do the same.

They reorder themselves and Dean cracks the door open back into the sunlight of the early evening. The hall is still deserted, and the dark space they had made their own, and which had seemed both close and expansive when filled with their breath and sound and scent, was now merely a closet again, with a wad of slowly crusting tissue on the cement floor.

Cas closes the door and leans against it sleepily, Dean stands on his shaking legs, still alight with the warm hit of his orgasm. The boy is flushed by not overly expressive and Dean wonders why that bothers him, why he takes it personally that the boy who's clearly used him for a good time (fully reciprocal thought that was) seems not to be with him, in the warm sunny corridor, the floor now dried to mop streaks and dim reflections.

"Hey." Dean rubs his still slightly itching palm against his overalls. Cas looks at him as if only just now realising he's there. There are a few things Dean could say, _That was really hot, You were pretty good, Do you do this a lot? _But what actually comes out is – "Are you doing anything later?"

The boy (and Dean) is surprised by the question.

"I don't know yet." He answers, and Dean can tell it's not subterfuge or casualness – Cas genuinely hasn't thought of anything to do yet.

"Do you want to do something?"

Cas blinks at him as if they haven't just exchanged breathless hand jobs - as if he has no idea what Dean means.

"With me." Dean adds. "I have a car we could drive...somewhere, do...something."

Cas nibbles the edge of one lip, considering.

Dean wonders why the fuck he even asked. He's twenty six – this kid is seventeen. He could get fired, arrested and charged for doing anything with him. He's got Sam to deal with, his Dad to cope with and a job to keep, rent to pay.

_So why can't you have a little fun?_ His brain asks. _And Cas is fun._

"I'd like that." Cas says, his eyes looking Dean over again as if he hasn't already thoroughly sampled the merchandise, as if Dean is still a mystery to him. "Pick me up on the corner by the convenience store – Eleven tonight." He says it like it's a cordial arrangement between friends, and walks off without even attempting a kiss or even to flirt a little.

Dean picks up his mop and tries to shake off the intoxicated daze that the kid has washed over him.

He mops his way down towards the science building, whistling as he goes.

_This was meant to be a short thing, but I can feel another epically long (at least for me) fic bubbling towards the surface. But until I decide to run with it, it might stay as a little bit of a porny serial – maybe another chapter or so. Lyrics at the top from Amy Studt – no idea why. _


	2. Chapter 2

_No sex no drugs no luck no love_

_When it comes to today_

_Stay if you wanna love me stay..._

_Oh don't be shy,_

_Let's cause a scene. _

_Glamorous, indie rock and roll is what I want,_

_It's in my soul,_

_It's what I need. _

Dean actually gives the whole arrangement a lot of thought. An uncharacteristically large amount of thought.

On the one hand – hot sex with an even hotter guy, who was still just a little mysterious, and who had, not eight hours ago brought him off with unquestionable enjoyment and talent.

On the other hand, the guy in question was seventeen and went to the school in which he was currently employed.

He could kind of imagine the news headlines if that little piece of information ever slipped out.

He was also supposed to be looking after Sam, and making sure his Dad didn't go out and drink himself stupid on the rent money taped to the back of the toilet.

Though Sam could look after himself.

And whatever he did, nothing got between John and drink for long. He'd sneak out and run up credit if he could, then it was left to Dean to pay off the heavies when they inevitably came calling.

And Cas had known his own mind...had come to him...

So really it came down to – Sex vs Doing What Many Would Consider The Right Thing.

What it actually came down to was Dean taking the impala and cruising past the general store once night had fallen. Right on time the shadowy bundle of Cas peeled itself from where it had been sitting, scrunched at the foot of the wall, and jogged to the side of Dean's car.

He felt uncomfortably like a regular customer trawling for hookers.

Cas got into the car and Dean took a moment to look at him. Out of uniform and clad only in a pair of skinny jeans and a vest beneath his canvas jacket, the kid looked even skinnier, but lithe and almost pretty with it – pale and striking.

"Drive around the corner and keep going straight – there used to be a Wendy's, now it's just a parking lot." Cas says, and as he fumbles a cigarette free from his pocket, Dean notices the tattoo of a snake on his wrist.

As soon as Cas lights up, Dean can tell it's not a cigarette, he reaches over and seizes the joint, stubbing it out in the ashtray.

Cas gives him a questioning look.

"You don't need that." Dean says firmly.

"Why?" He's not petulant, but curious, like a child (and doesn't that make Dean's skin crawl a little?) being offered a nebulous treat.

"Because, we're going to have a good time." Dean says, pulling into the shadowy square of asphalt that had once indeed been a parking lot. There are no lights around it so as soon as the car's inside light blinks off, the interior of the car blacks out.

His breathing is very loud in the dark.

Cas comes across the darkness, soft, scuffling thighs pressing into the seat on either side of Dean. His warm hands, calluses between the fingers from holding pens and cigarettes and joints, the scent of tobacco clinging to them – touch he sides of Dean's face. His neck.

"You know the part, where you're just about to kiss someone?" Cas murmurs, and his breath smells of mint toothpaste and regular cigarettes, his lips catching with a dry pop as he speaks. "That – is my favourite part." He keeps their lips just barely within reach, so close that Dean's body starts to seize up with tension, with craving and want. The boy's hands stroke his face, his hips rock gently, intermittently against Dean's own, yet still they aren't kissing, though he can feel Cas's hunger to be doing so.

Each time Dean moves his head forwards, the boy shifts back with a needy little noise, hips pressing fully into his own. It's weird to be so hard, aching in his jeans against Cas's own stiff cock, and yet still want his mouth to be touched more than anything else, to feel all that hot breath and quick tongued pleasure pass his lips.

Cas's mouth touches his, hesitantly, like sinking into a too-hot bath. His fingers thread into Dean's semi-short hair and he crushes their chests tightly together, moaning emphatically in response to Dean's efforts.

They kiss for what could be a minute or a day, Dean's eyes are closed and there's a hungry, not quite clean shaven mouth against his. The kiss is open and messy and slick with the minty tablets of his teeth catching at Dean's lip. It's honest, more than anything.

At some point Cas's hand slaps behind him at the controls on the dash and some random station comes on the radio, slow, painfully drawn out indie rock drawling out of the speakers. The younger man laughs quietly in the back of his throat, tongue running out over his bottom lip.

Dean drags him back for another kiss.

There is something addictive about Cas, Dean has decided, something in the smoky, insubstantial movement of him, the heat rolling off of his musty skin and the hot, sweet, musk of him, a mixture of previously inhaled grass and pillow mussed hair.

Castiel for his part is enthralled with the weight, the sheer muscular bulk of the man he's straddling. The strength of Dean's hands on him, the insistent roll of his hips that presses the hardness in his battered jeans up against Castiel's own. The car around them is dark and old and impressive, and it feels so bad, so adult and wrong and utterly glorious, to be pressing his knees into the leather seats of the impala, with the school's janitor underneath him, lazily fucking his mouth with his slick tongue.

He's enjoying it enough that he doesn't wish he'd gotten to smoke his joint. That much alone says something for Dean's prowess.

Cas leant back and slipped out of his jacket, dropping it languidly to the floor. He plucks at the bottom of his vest and slides it up over his head, wadding the cloth and tossing that to one side as well. His long fingers return to skate down his flat torso, tracing the space between his slight pectorals and down to his navel.

Dean attacks his mouth again hungrily, hands running up Cas's naked back and down to his half uncovered hips. Cas's arms rest on the seat on either side of Dean's head, sliding forwards until they're chest to chest. Their hips are circling now, rubbing denim to denim furiously as Dean's hands slide on Cas's sweat blooming skin and their mouths meet, sucking and biting messily. Cas moans and the sound is like an animal on the prowl, a stray dog in heat. His hand grips Dean's hair...and then the pressure of him is gone, and Dean's grinding up to empty air, Cas have slipped off of him and down into the foot space.

Dean leans back in to the seat and stretches lazily, he feels like his whole fucking body's on fire. The rustle of plastic and foil brings him back to the present, and he looks down to see, through the dark, Cas's long pale fingers flicking through the pockets of his discarded jacket. He produces a small, square packet between two fingers. 'Best of You' is playing on the radio, the opening bars a solid heartbeat as Dean watches Cas tilt his pale face up to look at him.

"Open up." Cas husks, and Dean's hand falls to his fly of its own accord.

Cas rips the packet open with his white teeth and efficiently rolls the sheath over Dean's cock. He bats the older man's hand away from the base and Dean has time to detect the scent of cheap grape suckers before the breath is punched from him. Cas's mouth on his dick is almost painfully good, hot and tight and earnest. Dean tosses his head back against the seat, one hand fisting in Cas's hair and the other clamping onto his bare shoulder. The radio blares screaming lyrics and guitar and Dean's hips pitch up, he's gasping, panting, and Cas just sucks harder, works his mouth up and down, lips stretched tight as his tongue flicks and works around the shaft.

Cas's head moves up and down rhythmically beneath Dean's hand, and Dean's eyes are screwed shut against the darkness of the car. He can still hear Cas though, and the sounds are wet and greedy, the messy suction of latex and saliva, the rough humming at the back of his throat at a particularly awkward angle, he makes no pretence of enjoying the experience of giving head – but he's going to town anyway, determined to make it good, hard and fast and glorious.

Dean's body goes first limp and then coiled tight as he feels himself turning shuddery and warm, the music and the wet sound of those gorgeous lips on him fade out and he's jerking upwards in pleasure, the first shot like a hot lance through him, followed by the loosening of his limbs, the slower pulses that come with his aftershocks. Cas slips him from his mouth and removes the rubber with a deft hand, tossing it into the ashtray.

Dean lies for a moment, getting his breath back, then he twists, pulling Cas up and urging him against the far door, legs on the seat, so that Dean can half sit, half lie between them. He gestures at Cas and the boy gets it, handing him a wrapped condom and leaning back, on arm bent behind his head, the other resting on his stomach.

Dean opens the skinny jeans and pushes them down with a little difficulty. The skin beneath is creamy and pale, Cas isn't wearing underwear. As with the previous condom, this one is also flavoured, though Dean doesn't know how cough-syrup cherry is supposed to be better than the skin and pre-come itself. He slides it on and the kid mewls pleasantly, settling his hips against the seat. Soft rock plays on the radio as Dean leans over him and takes the sheathed cock in his mouth. Soon he's got a long fingered hand clenched in his hair, another gently probing his cheek and a panting, bucking teenager under him, whining and wriggling and tossing his head from side to side.

He's gorgeous.

When Cas finally comes, so hard and fast that his eyes roll back and he goes still, Dean pulls off and disposes of the rubber. They sit for a minute, Dean massaging his jaw to stop the ache, Cas leaning insensibly against the door.

Cas is the first to speak, sliding upright and tugging his pants up. "Can you take me home?"

"Sure." Dean's a little blindsided by that one as he watches Cas dredge up his vest and jacket. "Did I do something...wrong, or..."

Cas looks at him.

"No. It's just late and..." he shrugs. "I thought you were done so..." Another shrug.

"Well, if you want to go home." Dean starts the engine and slowly steers out of the lot. Cas stretches in the seat next to him.

"It was good." He says, as if to soften the blow of his sudden want to leave.

"Good." Dean agrees.

Castiel wriggles across the seat and presses to his side gently.

"We could...I don't know, meet again, or something." He hedges.

"I'd like to." Dean allows. "Just...uh...keep this quiet, ok?"

Castiel huffs softly, then turns and nuzzles the space behind Dean's ear.

"I don't get people in trouble." He whispers.

Dean's kind of ashamed that this kind of turns him on.

_Ok, updates will happen sometime in the future, I'm going on vacation for a week! So I'll be back to business afterwards._


	3. Chapter 3

_**Taking care of business, **_

_**and working over time. **_

"_Where have you been?"_

It's the question that faces both Dean and Castiel when they arrive home at long past midnight. Castiel's father is waiting up at the dining room table, the evidence collected from his search of Castiel's room laid out before him on its shined surface.

"Where have you been?"

Castiel shucks off his jacket and drops it into the hall closet.

"Out."

The mirror on the closet door reflects his messy dark hair, stubble burnt cheeks and puffy read lips. His eyes are clear, for once, and he remember belatedly that he'd left his last rolled joint in Dean's car. He's far too sober to deal with his father. His hand still smell like grape suckers, are still slightly greasy with the lube from the condom. He can taste it in the corners of his mouth. Castiel feels the brief warmth of the encounter blur away into nothing like chalk on a rainy sidewalk. He'd felt the same after fucking around with Dean at school, the slow diming of a lighted match as the pleasure ran and left him itching and aching for more.

"With who?" Castiel goes into the dining room and glares at his father, dressed in his pyjamas and robe. What time is it? He barely remembers when he left, has no idea how much time passed with Dean.

"Just a..." He shakes his head. "Someone. Can I go to bed?"

"No. Come sit here." His father sounds angry, not that Castiel has never seen him angry, but he'd thought they were past this. His father had screamed at him about his first tattoo, grounded him after the second and had not noticed the third. His frequent late night excursions were now met mostly with sanctimonious quips and stubborn silence – 'You will reap what you plant.' That was one.

Castiel was considering it as a back piece, he hadn't had any work done for a while, and there, he'd never have to read it.

Then he sees the pile of things on the table.

Ahh, that.

Castiel had wondered how long it would take his father to dig around in his rats nest of a room. The things on the table: a plastic baggy containing a clump of weed, a few random pills and a small amount of ground down valium, the small collection of porn magazines (mostly gay, with a few copies of Bizarre, including the one legged model he'd become fascinated with for a while) the bottle of lube, box of condoms and half flask of absinthe. It was clearly far more than his father had thought he'd find.

He'd been expecting the worst, drinking, a secret girlfriend, maybe some porn. Not this.

"Do you have anything to say?" his father demands.

Castiel looks at him calmly.

"Stay the fuck out of my room."

His father strikes the table.

"Filth. Castiel, this is..." he paws at the cover of one magazine, spinning it open, flicking pages of men, naked and posed, joined and writhing, across the table at him. The one legged woman with the black patent platform and the amazing snake tattoo circling her right nipple, falls to the floor. "You have debased yourself long enough. It is time to end this."

"I'll decide when it's enough."

"When will that be?" He father yells at him. "Is there a drug you haven't tried? A hole or a stain you have not placed in your skin? How about these? Is there anything in these pages you haven't done, to man or woman?" Another wave of magazine leaves fly over the wood. "What are you trying to prove? What do you want?"

And beneath all the rage, Castiel sees the confusion in the man that raised him, his complete inability to grasp what even Castiel cannot – the Why of it. Why does he do these things to himself?

To tell him that he doesn't know would be to admit something, something Castiel can't understand, can't let catch up with him.

"I want you, to stay out of my life." Castiel looks down at the trappings of it on the table. So many gaudy things. "If you can't do that, I can move."

"You're seventeen. You're my responsibility."

Castiel laughs to himself, his father bristles.

"You will always be my son." He intones, and Castiel can't laugh at that, can't bare the snatch of grief and want that goes through his heart – like the good Castiel, the righteous Castiel, is weeping, is dying to tear free and go to his father for comfort.

Castiel denies it.

He turns and ascends the stairs. His room is just as messy as it was before he left. He strips off his jeans, his vest. Crawling under the tatty duvet he coils up, sinuous and skinny as a snake. His body smells like Dean, like sweat and leather seats and grape lube and cleaning solvents.

His chest aches with the need to cry.

_Dean lets himself into their apartment. It smells as always like cheap beer, vomit and tomato paste. The first two scents come from his father, from the piss stained clothes Dean has to put on to wash tonight, and the barker lounger that has been soaked with both fluids too many times to get rid of the pervasive stink. The latter smell comes from his brother, from the tinned ravioli and spaghetti letters he heats on the stove for his dinner. _

_Their apartment is only four rooms. The living room has a kitchen nook and a TV, the lounger and a couch. The couch pulls out into a bed for Sam, the two bedrooms belong to Dean and John, when John is around. _

_The first thing Dean does is check the rent money taped to the toilet. Still there. John was far to adept at stealing the bank card, so Dean had long since given up keeping the money there. Sam was asleep on the pull out bed when Dean went into the bathroom, but when he comes out, carrying the hamper so he can put on a wash, Sam is wide awake and sitting up in his faded blue shirt._

"_Where have you been?"_

_On the lips of Castiel's father, it had been an accusation. With Sam it is far more complex, accusatory and worried and sad. He has long experience of people ditching out on him, John most frequently, but Dean had left Sam when he was just a kid. Dean had turned sixteen and he'd wanted out – away from John and their piss reeking life. _

_He'd come back a month later when Sammy called him from a pay phone. John was drunk, had taken the car, which they were living in at the time, having lost Dean's wages. Sam had been left at the side of the road with bleary instructions to wait for John's return. _

_That had been two days ago._

_Dean had come back, had taken up the mantle of man of the house on a full time basis. For some reason he always took John back when he'd been on a bender._

_Sam thought it was because John was so pathetic, so much so that neither of them bothered to call him 'Dad' anymore._

_Dean took John back for the father he remembered. The one he'd had until Mom died._

_And not a minute longer._

"_I was out with a guy." Dean mutters, stuffing his clothes and Sam's and John's into the washing machine. He's never lied to Sam about his interests on the sex front. He never brings lays home, and that's the end of it._

"_It's late."_

"_I know that, just...go back to sleep." Dean wipes a hand over his sweaty forehead. _

"_Dean?"_

"_Yes, Sammy – what?" Dean snaps._

"_...nothing. It's fine." Sam sounds upset and Dean instantly feels like a prize asshole for yelling at him._

"_It's clearly not, what's the matter?" Dean asks softly. Slapping the machine into working order with one hand and wedging a dishtowel under it to soak up the inevitable leak with the other._

"_Just school stuff...I can handle it." Sam is locked down tight, Dean can tell. Sam goes to the school he works at, being seventeen, smart, gangly and having a brother who's a janitor? Not exactly keeping the bullies away._

"_If it gets to be a problem. Tell me." Dean says gruffly._

"_It's just Brian Summers...I can ignore him." Sam snuffles into the duvet. "Night Dean."_

"_Night Sam...is John asleep."_

_Sam goes still._

"_He went out." He says apologetically. _

_Dean sighs._

"_I'll check for him in the morning." He rumbles. He goes into his room, shuts the door and tugs off his clothes, folding them on the dresser for wearing the next day. He hasn't got many sets. Dean slides under the duvet and lies face down on his pillow, sprawled over the crappy single mattress on the double box spring. He lifts a hand to smooth the hair from his face._

_He falls asleep surrounded by the scent of cherries._

_**I'm back and updates will soon follow, I'm kind of planning a whole arc for this one, so, watch this space, and as always – follow me, JollySnidge on twitter – for progress updates.**_


	4. Chapter 4

Boy, I will be your sexy silk,  
>Wrap me around round round round<br>I'll be your pussy cat licking your milk right now

Oh a kiss can last all night  
>Your love'll seduce me nibble and bite<p>

Will you be my medicine man?  
>Put your hand on my chest<br>Feel the bump bump bump bump  
>Will you be my sugar rush?<br>Make me get high with just one touch

Oh! I think I like you

_Dean wakes up on his face with half a hard on, a hand on his own thigh and the fuzzy end of a dream behind his eyes. Tacky morning mouth and a frustrated coil of want in his belly are poor substitutes for the dream world, the ever-stretching softness of a bed he will never own, the scratch of stubble against his lips, the pervasive sweetness of cherry syrup and red, slick lips on his skin._

_The apartment smells freshly of supermarket scotch. _

_Dean presses his face into the pillow and groans, rubbing his hips into the single mattress that lies diagonally across the double box spring. It has been...so long since he woke up from that kind of dream, next to a person worth dreaming about. So long since he's had anything but a hook up or an empty bed and morning wood. He lets his had stray further under his body and feels warmth shudder up his spine. So close already. Fake cherries in the corners of his mouth._

_His alarm blares. _

_Dean snatches his had away and sits up with a huff of frustration._

_Time to get to work._

_Of course, not to his actual paying eight till late job, no, first he had to clean up his Dad's puke, set the laundry up to dry and make sure Sam got up and to school ok._

_There was puke, as expected, just inside the front door and stinking like acid and booze and rancid tomato paste. Dean scraped the mess together with a plastic dustpan and a fistful of paper towels, flushing the lot before sluicing the patch of carpet with detergent and hot water. _

_Sam trembled awake and looked over at him._

"_I could have gotten that." He mutters._

"_You've got to get up and ready, come on, bathroom." Dean swats the covers with his hand on route to the kitchenette. "You want toast for breakfast?"_

"_What else is there?" Sam asks, folding his bed into nonexistence beneath the couch. _

"_Bread." Dean says apologetically, "I'll by some proper food next time, ok?"_

"_Ok." Sam goes into the bathroom and starts the shower running. _

_Dean flings open the door of his Father's room._

"_John!" He raps on the doorframe which his knuckles. "John!...Hey, Asshole, you dead in here?"_

_John moans from under the quilt. _

"_Good." Dean mutters, shutting the door. He's sure that someday pretty soon he's going to check on him and find John drowned in his own vomit. _

_He has no idea how he'll feel when that happens._

_He sticks two slices of blessedly mould free bread into the toaster and shoves the lever down. Coffee him, juice for Sam. Bag lunch, one turkey sandwich for Sam, an apple, a reused plastic bottle of water. Dean hung the laundry on the rickety plastic drying frame and spritzed pine scent on the patch of drying carpet. _

_He walked Sam to school, he tried to walk there most day to save on fuel, but sometimes they were just too late to risk walking the half hour to the school. Bidding goodbye to Sam at the gate, where Sam would have to wait until school began, a good forty minutes after Dean had to be at work, Dean went in through the side gate using his key and went to get changed in the bathroom once he'd found his overall in the janitors closet._

_The closet wasn't the best place to avoid temptation, although it smelt only of bleach Dean could still recall the way Cas had felt against him, hot and heady with desperation. He sighs as he closes the door and heads off to get changed. It had been one hell of a ride with that kid, but now it was back to work, back to reality. He still felt a pang of guilt, that guy clearly had issues, some kind of trouble in him from the way he'd gone so meek and cool when they finished up in the car last night. _

_But Dean had trouble of his own, he wasn't looking for more._

_Unfortunately, trouble could climb like a tropical snake._

_Dean was picking litter along the edge of the football field during first period, empty chip packets and candy wrappers from the lunch period of the previous day, when the tree beside the fence started to shake, the branches writhing irritably. _

_And trouble dropped right down in front of him, scratched from his climb and stubble flecked as a savage._

"_You should be in class." Dean says sternly, like he's an actual upstanding employee and not a statutory rapist without two cents to rub together._

"_Class is boring." Cas is wearing his uniform, only he's just in the shirt and pants, having discarded the other layers God only knew where. He drops to the ground and lies down in the grass, partially in the shade._

"_Why not stay home?" Dean goes back to his garbage. _

_Cas makes a gruff sound of distaste. "My Father is boring." He looks up at Dean through his lashes. "You were fun, as you promised."_

_Dean huffs to himself and uses all his resolve to walk away from the bizarre teenager who's spread out on the ground like some kind of offering. He picks garbage steadily, ignoring the compulsion to turn and look behind him. But inevitably he loses._

_Self control just isn't in his genes. _

_Cas sits up almost as soon as Dean sneaks a covert glance at him, and almost as if the kid knows he starts to unbutton his shirt, slowly, sliding it back and off his shoulder in a way should have so awful pussycat dolls music over it. There is something wrong with a kid who acts like that, Dean knows for a fact. He should not be indulging himself in looking at the boys pale skin, the glint off of his navel piercing in the morning sun or the slight shimmy of his hips as he lies back down._

_He shouldn't, but he is._

_But looking is all he does. _

_Dean finishes up his work outside and goes back to his indoor duties. He mops, he cleans windows and polishes the wooden gymnasium floor while it's out of use all day. He takes care of dozens of pointless jobs that can't begin to bother him as much as the pool of John's vomit that started his day. _

_He refuses, point blank, to even entertain the idea of seeking Cas out for another hook-up. _

_It had been good, wrong obviously, but good. So Dean didn't feel too bad about touching an underage teen. No, it was Cas himself that made him feel guilty, the kid was a space case, a burn out with issues up the tail pipe. Dead really didn't want to add that to his already full plate, or add to the boys woes by using him again. Not while he had the will to steer clear of him._

_At the end of school he still had to polish he hall floor so he set to the task, knowing that Sam would wait for him in the parking lot. _

_Unfortunately, so did Brian Summers._

_Dean leaves the building feeling sweaty and tired, only to see a boy slightly taller than Sam, laying into his brother with his feet as Sam lies curled on the ground. _

_Dean didn't so much yell as roar hoarsely at the kid, sprinting on tired legs but getting to Sam just as his attacker flees the school grounds. _

"_Sam? Sammy? Are you ok? Shit. Do you need to go to the E.R?" _

"_No..." Sam coughs blood onto the asphalt. _

"_Sam..." Dean clutches at him blindly, if he lost his brother, that was it. Nothing left. "Sam, that looks like internal bleeding..."_

"_I bit my tongue." Sam whimpers. "I'm fine. I'm fine." He's panting as he says it, tears running down his dusty face. "Please...just get me home?"_

_Dean curses the fact that he left the car at home._

_He ends up lifting Sam in his arms, his brother's stuffed book bag over one shoulder as he struggles for half an hour along the streets. At least they are mostly deserted. Sam sniffles and tries not to cry at the same time, so Dean is left trying to comfort him and not jostle his tender abdomen simultaneously. _

_They make it back to the apartment and it takes Dean another fifteen minutes to get Sam upstairs and lying on the couch. He's just soaking a washcloth and trying to dab the blood from Sam's injured mouth when his Father comes out of his bedroom, dressed in the same shirt as yesterday and wearing three days worth of beard growth. _

_Sam whimpers at the pain in his mouth. _

"_I know...shhhh..." Dean says, just as his mother used to say to him. _

"_Dean..." John looks down at Sam, frowning. _

"_Yes." Dean lifts his brother's shirt to check the damage._

"_I need twenty bucks."_

_Dean turns to look at him._

"_I'm going out." Blusters John._

_Something in Dean snaps. _

_He delves in his pocket and finds a screwed up ten and two fives. He tosses them at John and glares at him, jaw set._

"_Your son is lying here, bleeding...and you're begging me for beer money?" He snaps. "See if you can finish the job on your liver, save me the trouble of smothering you while you sleep it off." Dean turns back to Sam, half hoping his Father will yell at him to show him some respect._

_John leaves without a word. _

_Dean puts a bag of frozen peas on Sam's stomach and makes him take some painkillers. There's no internal damage that Dean can see, just some bruising. He's still mad as hell, and it's probably a good job he didn't catch Brian because if he had? He'd be out of a job and in police custody right now._

_Sam drifts off and Dean covers him over and kisses his forehead._

_He loves Sam probably more than he loves his own life._

_But looking around the empty apartment, which by tomorrow morning will be scented with vomit again, which right now contains the ghost of the John Winchester that was...Dean can't stay there, he'll go crazy._

_He leaves Sam a note and promises to be back soon. _

_Dean drives the car, to hell with the fuel prices, down to the beach. He likes the beach, not because he had happy childhood memories here or some shit like that, just because it's the end of the land, the end of the earth and of all the teaming responsibilities that fester on it._

_On this stretch of sandy beach, running right from the clumpy grass to the thrashing waves and to the steely twilit sky – it's like the end of the world. _

_Dean plants his ass on the sand and kicks his feet out in front of him, boot heels burying themselves in the sand. The scent of salt air is clean in his lungs, no more phantom cherries to drive him insane, no more puke to burn his nose and assault his gag reflex, no more cleaning products, no more of Sam's hamsterish, growing boy scent – just the sea, that clear cut odour that is pure sky. _

_Dean lies back and breathes in sharply. Ten minutes. He just needs ten minutes._

_The balled up wad of feelings that he's been pushing down since he found Sam in the parking lot unravels. He picks up a rock and hurls it at the sea, then a chunk of wood. He yells 'Fuck!' out across the endless space. He throws himself back onto the sand and soon he's shaking, one hand pressed to his mouth to keep the shameful sounds in, eyes clenched shut against the salt water that's welling in them._

_The touch of glass to the back of his free hand surprises him. _

_He looks up to see Cas standing over him, wearing a khaki tee and his canvas jacket over jeans. His feet are bare on the sand. He's touching a half empty bottle of whisky to Dean's hand._

"_You want?" He asks gracelessly, sinking down to the sand beside Dean. _

_It's purely shock that keeps him from raging at the boy, he takes the bottle. Thinks about how long it's been since he had a drink. He doesn't have a problem, he just doesn't want to become his father, doesn't want the pain in Sam's eyes when he smells it._

_He unscrews the cap, falters, and passes it back._

"_Suit yourself." Cas took a deep swallow, shadowed throat working. _

"_What are you doing here?" Dean asks, and his voice comes out rough and strained._

_Cas shrugs. "I sleep out here sometimes...it's..." he frowns at the sea. "I feel free here."_

_Dean snorts bitterly. "Because you're so controlled normally."_

"_Being free, and feeling it, aren't the same." Cas intones "And I like to swim naked, it's nice."_

_Dean swallows, his mouth dry. _

"_You're having a bad day." Cas tells him._

"_Yes."_

"_Want me to help make it better?"_

_Dean looks at him, at the sad, strange boy who seems to be doing everything he can to become just a body, just a junkie or alcoholic – someone who will be pitied, tolerated in later life, but not loved. Never that. How can you love someone that loves only a poison? How can you offer yourself, your heart to someone who's heart has been eaten away?_

_Three hours ago, Dean would have said no._

_He's a good man, not great, but good. He doesn't want to help this kid to bury himself._

_Three hours ago._

_Three hours, was suddenly a lifetime._

"_Yes." Dean murmurs. _

_Cas slides closer, nuzzles the side of his face and his long pale fingers fall to the inseam of Dean's jeans. He kisses, sharp, whiskery kisses against Dean's mouth and throat. Dean tangles his fingers in the boys hair, holding him lightly so that he can roll on top of him, pressing him down into the sand. Cas moans readily and lets his jean clad legs fall open to the force of Dean's pelvis. Dean slides his hands under Cas's jacket and then jerks it off of him awkwardly, peeling the vest upwards and off, laying all that pale flesh out on the sand._

_Cas's hair is a dark tangle, hanging in his eyes and dusted with grit, sand sticks to his sweating skin and comes off of his hands and onto Dean's clothes as he pulls Dean's shirt over his head. Cas sighs as their bare chests meet, wriggling slightly on the sand and pressing his hips up._

_Dean's hot, blazingly so, his chest shivery in the sea wind, his jeans scorching and tight. He lowers a hand to the zipper and Cas tracks the movement hungrily, tossing his head back when Dean rubs a hand over the boy's cock, still obscured by denim. _

_They kick off their shoes and jeans. Dean slides out of his underwear, Cas is wearing nothing underneath, as he had been the day before. The teenager arches up to rub his naked cock against Dean's, and they both shudder at the contact. It feels so good, so very good, and Cas is bending his neck to scrape his teeth at one of Dean's nipples, sending the older man gasping and grunting with the effort of holding back. _

_Cas spreads his legs wider, shifting them so that Dean's cock presses below his own, sliding behind his sack and over the sensitive skin beyond. Cas gasps and whines, writhing energetically, his hands pulling Dean's naked skin onto his own, and Dean is only too happy to lose himself to the sensation. He's licking his way over Cas's nipples, hips rocking steadily, when the teen starts thrashing his head from side to side, lifting his hips earnestly._

"_Inside me, please..." he pants, and at Dean's continued motionlessness he gives a small cry, grabs his hand and forces it between his own legs and alongside Dean's nudging cock. "Please..." Cas rocks his hips, pressing his cleft down against Dean's hand and bucking as if trying to gather enough friction from the impossibly light stimulation. The litany continues, breathless and urgent, as Dean presses his finger to the tight little entrance and pushes. _

_Cas's body arches and he cries out wantonly, one hand groping for a sachet of lube, claying it free from the tangle of his jeans and dropping it next to Dean. _

"_Use that..." His hips jerk upwards, driving the finger further inside, his head rolls on the sand. "Fast...oh God, do it fast..."_

_The urgency is catching and Dean rips the sachet with his teeth, pouring lube unto his fingers before returning them to the parting of the squirming teen's thighs. Cas groans at the second finger and growls through his teeth on the third._

"_Do it now." His tone is begging even if the words aren't, like he's afraid Dean is going to evaporate and leave him like cooling sweat. Or as if he's used to people leaving him in the lurch when it came to sex. Dean was willing to bet to that being the case. _

_Another brief one-handed scrabble through Cas's clothes turns up a condom, Dean tears the foil and slides it on, slicking it with his sticky palm. Cas's body is heaving now, desperate and wild and almost without consciousness. He doesn't even open his eyes when Dean presses to his entrance. The older man falters for a second, wondering how much whisky Cas had had. He had seemed sober, but he remembers the joint yesturday, wonders belatedly what else might be slipping though his system, sending him out of it whilst Dean used his body._

_Cas whines and raises his hips, thrusting up and forcing Dean an abrupt inch inside of him. _

_After that Dean stops thinking._

_Lean naked legs spread underneath him, one hitching up against his thigh as Cas angles him towards his prostate. Dean knows when he's struck it because the boy practically sobs and clenches tighter around him, the already suffocating channel constricting further as Cas's hands scrabble against his back. His cock rubs between their stomachs, prodding Dean's and rubbing against the smooth skin._

_Even as Dean chases his release the younger boy's body starts to seize up in strong jerks, each helpless 'Oh Fuck!' punctuated by an upward spasm. Cas's hand clutches the small of Dean's back, the leg hooked around his waist kicking out on its own as he goes limp and comes spectacularly over Dean's naked stomach._

_Dean tugs the naked body under him closer, fucking hard and deep and yet still not getting close enough. He's hard as a rock, leaking fit to bust and he can't, quite, come. He's too wound up, over worked and stressed out. He keeps going, bowing his head over Cas's steadily rising and falling chest. The sounds caught in Dean's throat are desperate, needy, and Cas lets his legs fall open, wider, allowing Dean to sink deeper, using him quick and hard._

_Dean's at it so long that Cas starts to wriggle and gasp again, sobbing each time Dean strikes his prostate. He bucks and shivers and moans until something in the teen breaks open and he starts to pant. _

'_I'm gonna come...fuck...I'm gonna come again..." punctuated with hoarse moans. _

_A lithe hand slides up the back of Dean's thigh, finger pressing hard against his entrance. _

_Cas spasms and cries out, coming for a second time mid-jerk, body drawing taught._

_Dean shudders and, finally, spills himself with a tight groan. _

_He collapses on top of Cas and possibly passes out for a second, because the next thing he knows there's a hand stroking his hair and he feels cooler and spent and calm. _

"_That was amazing." Cas's voice, hoarse from crying out, whispers over his head. _

"_Just...thanks for getting me off." Dean can't really be delicate with half his brain fried. "Thought I'd never get there." The small pebbles of Cas's piercing are pressing into his own stomach._

"_You made me come, twice." Cas shivers in remembered bliss. "If you wanted a pint of blood right now I'd say have at it."_

_Dean chuckles drily, rolling over and picking up his clothes. _

_Cas stands up and dusts himself off as best he can, though God knows where he's got sand lodged. They pull on their clothes and once again Dean is struck by how much smaller Cas looks now, less sure and competent than he had been when he propositioned him, though no less artlessly sexual. _

"_Do you want a ride home?" he offers._

_Cas looks as surprised as he had done the previous night._

"_Yes, thank you."_

_They don't talk until Dean pulls up at the end of Cas's street, then Dean turns to the teen and says._

"_Look...if this happens again...which, I'm not saying it will, but, if it were to...I would give you a ride home, ok? So don't act like it's something you have no right to expect. It's just being a decent guy about it."_

"_I don't sleep with many of those." Cas says aimlessly, laughing slightly to himself. "I don't _sleep _with anyone." He glances at Dean. "But thank you, for your concern." He says evenly. "I'll look forward to that 'if'."_

_Dean lets him out of the car and drives home._

_In the apartment Sam is still asleep and appears to be fine. John is still out._

_Dean goes to bed with guilt burning a hole in his stomach, knowing that there will indeed be vomit to clean up come morning, and food to prepare, halls to sweep and bullies to deal with._

_All over again. _


	5. Chapter 5

_Smoke on the water._

_Fire in the sky._

Cas wakes up in his own sweet time. He has an hour before school starts, and since he's actually going today he stretches and rolls over onto his back as he starts to wake up. The bedroom is very dark because of the number of sheets hung over the window. He never liked early morning light much, usually because he had a hangover or just a late night to compensate for. There are clothes all over the floor, books dotted around the double bed and his boots and canvas shoes are arranged haphazardly on what had once been his bookcase. There's a pair of red panties hanging off of one side of his bed frame, and he thinks they belong to Karen from his AP Chem class (when he'd still taken AP Chemistry) but they're his now he guesses. She never came back for them, maybe she thought she'd left them with some other guy.

Cas likes red, so he doesn't really mind them being there.

He squirms and feels the familiar lance of soreness up through his insides. Right, he got laid last night. He closes his eyes and presses down into the mattress, it feels good, a little hurt, a little burn and he can still remember what it felt like inside of him, thick and hot and so hard it was barely flesh anymore. There's a phantom touch on his prostate and now he's hardening in earnest, the warm sheets crumpled on his back and his skin still gritty from the beach.

Someone taps on his door.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for school?" His father calls.

Cas hauls himself into a sitting position, dropping the sheet as he does so.

"I'm up!" he yells back, flopping back down on the bed. "Jesus." He curses, hand sliding downwards and stroking himself quick and easy. Friday morning.

He showers after and gets into his uniform, puts on his mother's crucifix and goes downstairs to make his breakfast, he leaves for school with a power bar in his bag and knowing that he's forgotten something.

He ends up climbing the tree over into the school grounds again, simply because the guy from the lacrosse team he'd blown a week or so ago was by the entrance. Cas couldn't be bothered to deal with him right now. Not with Dean Winchester somewhere on the premises. In all of two days he's gotten Cas off four times, twice turning the same round of sex. To say the teenager's interest is piqued is to underestimate it. He's enthralled.

Dean has not only made special effort to ensure his enjoyment, but he's also not kicked him out of the car eight miles from his house as soon as he'd come. Leaving Cas to shiver home in the rain, losing both his hard on and his buzz on the way.

Which to be fair, had only happened twice. Though you'd think he'd have learnt the first time Brian had done it.

Anyway, he thought as he ambled towards his first class of the day, which just happened to be Math. He had spent the last year of his life running in the opposite direction of his best instincts. He'd listened to the good little Castiel in his brain and he'd flung himself the other way.

Castiel Novak had been good, all the way through junior high, and high school.

He hadn't taken drugs. The preachers son in him had warned him not to.

Now, Cas was what most people considered a junkie, a burn out. (Though they were wrong about the heroin – small mercy).

Now he drank, he did things with men and women that made Cas_tiel _want to retch. He'd done it all, all of it, against the best wishes of the tiny scrap of his old self that he could not drown out.

And now there was Dean.

Older than the others, stronger (and oh how the feeling of all that weight, all that strength on him made him all the harder) he was a loner and kind of violent if the stories about him were to believed. (Cas had heard that he'd been expelled from school for fighting at eighteen, had been in bar fights and domestic altercations all the time, according to some) and his father was the town drunk.

That was just one great big pile of bad.

Cas couldn't wait to get wrapped up in it again.

Castiel was begging him to stop.

Dean is raking up grass cuttings outside of the window Cas sits by during his final class of the day. He spends the hour watching Dean as he works hard at his task, shedding the top of his overalls and pushing it down around his waist. Cas watches the white tee underneath ride up over the tanned, hardened stomach, exposing a dark scratchy trail of hair. He's licked near there, and the thought makes his body feel all hot and pleasantly tingly. He likes that feeling.

After his class ends and most of the students have trailed off home, Cas knows that Dean will have stuck around to clean the floors before tomorrow. He wanders the building before he finds him, setting up the buffer near the gym.

Dean spots him and freezes.

"Shouldn't you be getting home?" He mumbles, glowering at the buffer pad that he's trying to secure to the foot of the machine.

"I have a while." Cas tells him, watching Dean's heavy hands press the thick felt circle into place and stand the machine up with a grunt.

"You were watching me, before." Dean tells him.

"Yes."

"Don't. Watch me." Dean looks at him and swallows hard. Cas wonders what he sees. He has never really thought of himself as being that attractive. He's warm and bendy and he's got hair and smooth skin in the right places. A guy can get off with a soaped washcloth if he wants, that doesn't make it pretty, it's still a wet rag.

"I like watching you." Cas can feel desire unwinding in his belly, a bottomless snake pit.

_All day and all night, my desire for you unwinds like a poisonous snake. _It's a quote, something from Lit class. He likes it.

"I like you watching, I like to look at you – and that's a problem." Dean tells him sharply, taking a rag from his pocket and wiping his hands on it. "This is wrong, you're seventeen, and I could lose my job. They might investigate me..."

"And they'll find out that your Dad's drunk the whole time, and if you're doing stuff with me as well, then they'll take your brother away." Cas takes in Dean's surprised, pained expression. "Sorry."

It's the first apology he can remember giving in a while.

"Everyone knows." Dean shakes his head numbly, then throws the rag he's holding down on the floor. "Of course everyone knows." He spits.

"Do you feel guilty?" Cas asks as soon as the idea pops into his head.

Dean looks at him, eyes unreadable.

"About me. About what we did. Do you feel guilty?" Cas asks again.

"Yes." Dean confesses tightly.

And just like that there's a hard stone cold weight in his chest. He's never done anything to hurt anyone else before, and he's only just realised that throwing himself at Dean, even if Dean was older and obviously capable of saying 'no', might have consequences for Sam (who he's indifferent to at school but who seems like a good kid) and might make Dean feel bad.

Which isn't really the point of the whole sex thing, making people feel bad.

"Oh." Is all he can think of to say. He licks his lips. "I won't look at you...anymore." He says, turning away and walking back the way he came.

Dean doesn't come after him.

Cas doesn't know why he wants him to, only that he's disappointed by the silence behind him.

He walks out of the double doors of the school, bag swinging at his side. There's a twisty feeling in his gut that he can't identify.

He takes a valium. That should settle it.

Brian Summers is leaning against the school gate, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. He glances up and spots Cas walking down the school gates. He takes a final drag and tosses the butt away.

"Novak." He jerks his head to the car parked half up the curb at the end of the street. "You doing this or what?" He walks off without waiting for an answer. Cas follows him down the street towards the car after Brian's retreating back. They didn't have plans, but Brian took it as a given that Cas was permanently up for it.

Usually he's right. At the moment, Cas could kind of take it or leave it. Actually, he could really go with leaving it. But he wants something to ease out the hitch in his guts, the twist of guilt there.

And the valium isn't kicking in quick enough.

In the car, Brian drives silently, tapping his fingers to the rap on the stereo. Cas looks out of the window, watching cars pass by. Then fence panels, then finally they're in an empty lot behind a warehouse on the edge of town. Brian stops the car and rests a hand on the steering wheel, settling himself in the seat and lowering his fly.

Cas sighs, lowering himself and pulling the other boys already half hard cock out of his underwear. The condom is sour apple, it makes his taste buds cramp and saliva wells at the corner of his mouth when he's trying to get down to it.

Brian's hand grips his hair tightly, he swears and pushes up until Cas chokes.

It's like the handful of times before, and he shouldn't really be expecting different, but he was. For some stupid reason he thought this would be as good as it had been before, with Dean. Brian doesn't hover at the 'almost kiss' to please him. Cas hasn't actually told him that he likes that. Why would he? Brian doesn't kiss.

Brian's nails scratch the back of Cas's neck as he comes, groaning something that sounds a lot like 'fucking whore' but the pill is kicking in, so Cas's feeling too relaxed to mind. He pulls back and watches Brian strip off the rubber and toss it out into the lot, zipping his jeans up and starting the engine. He looks at Cas pointedly.

"You going?"

They're at least ten miles from Cas's house and it's getting dark by now and it's also kind of raining, albeit only in a light, vague way. Cas wasn't hard when he got into the car, and blowing Brian wasn't exactly stimulating, but he's only human and the scent of sex in the air has him ready to go, he can feel the pull of it in his belly. But apparently Brian's sick of him already.

"You could finish me off, just once." Cas gripes, shocked by the twinge of anger in his voice, he feels less mellow now, less calm, just empty. Just, nothing.

Brian glares at him, and then he laughs.

"I'm not gay, asshole." He shoves Cas's shoulder. "Get the hell out of my car."

Cas gets out and doesn't even wait for Brian to drive away. He starts walking home.

The rain intensifies, heavier and fast until his sweater and school shirt are soaked through and he's shivering. The dark closes in and he walks down the side of the road, beside a wooded cutting and a trench of mud. Skulking like an alley cat as his hair gets flattened to his brow.

A car hisses by on the wet road and Cas looks up to find that there's a sign ahead, he's now only five miles out of town. He's been walking for hours, he's exhausted and the valium isn't helping him to stay on track, he just wants to sleep.

Castiel shivers at the back of his brain, scared and alone on an empty road at night, wanting to be at home, safe with Father.

Cas lowers his head and keeps walking.

Headlights send his shadow spilling away in front of him, a black car drives past, then brakes on the road ahead, reverses until the driver can wind down the window and take a look at him.

"Cas?"

The teenager looks at Dean sceptically.

"Why are you here?" he mutters, though of course it is Dean who belongs on this road, in a car, and Cas who should not be walking it so late.

"I'm taking groceries home." Dean tells him. "Do want a ride into town?"

Cas circles the impala and gets in.

After a minute of silent driving, Dean asks his first question.

"So, why are you out here?"

"I had a thing." Cas says vaguely, his body still cold and his mind swimming.

"...you mean a...date." Dean surmises.

"Meaning I blew a guy in his car." Cas shrugs.

"He didn't want to take you back to town." Dean guesses.

"He didn't even want to reciprocate." Cas sighs. He looks sideways at Dean. "If you're interested..."

Dean grips the wheel tighter.

"Don't ask me that."

Oh right, the guilt thing. Cas had forgotten for a while. He wouldn't again.

"Whatever." He whispers.

Dean catches his next shiver and reaches over him, dragging his leather jacket from the side of the passenger seat, up over Cas's thin shoulders. The teenager clutches it gratefully.

In a corner of his mind, Castiel shifts out of the defiant foetal position he's adopted since Cas started running the show. He basks in the warmth of the worn leather, the equivalent of a cat nuzzling at a potentially kind stranger.

Cas frowns.

But Castiel continues to find Dean pleasant, to look at him through his own unique eyes, as a nice man who's taking care of them, and who isn't looking to use his body in return.

That settles it, he's steering clear of Dean from now on. If Castiel responds to him, that puts him officially in the red zone of AP classes and choir practice.

Castiel wants Dean. So the obvious thing to do is to avoid him and choose the opposite path, the way he's been doing for a year.

Only Cas wants him too.


	6. Chapter 6

When you're stoned baby,

And I am drunk.

And we make love it seems,

A little desolate.

It's hard sometimes not to look away.

And think what's the point?

When I'm having to hold this fire down.

_Alarm._

_Puke. _

_Breakfast cereal._

_Drive._

_Work._

_Dean scrubs new graffiti off of the lockers in the hallway before turning his attention to the trophy cases and polishing the glass with a rag and spray canister. He's not really focusing on the task at hand, mentally Dean is calculating the cost of replacing the clothes that Sam is rapidly growing out of. At least thirty dollars, if not more, and that money had been marked out for rent, or a deposit into the money he was saving for his Dad's rehab (whichever one this would be third? Fifth?) or his funeral, depending which came first. _

_The halls were deserted, so when he eventually sighed and stopped working to take a breath and swallow the familiar feeling of overwhelming weight that filled his chest when he had to think about money, there was no one around to see him pause. No one sees his brow crease with confusion and his mouth fall open in sudden realisation. If anyone had seen, they would perhaps wonder what about years old football trophies had cause such an intense reaction._

_Under Dean's hands the glass had become smear free, and he could now focus on the glinting gold underneath, the silver plaques and coloured ribbons. A few photos were arranged at the bottom, and it was, oddly, one of these, and not the hoard of metal that had attracted his attention. _

_A picture of the chess club from three years ago, and in the centre stood a thin boy with clear blue eyes, neat dark hair and a pale face innocent of stubble, its lips (Dean was willing to bet) having taken nothing more polluted than red bull between them. Dean recognises the Cas that is beneath the face of his younger counterpart, though there are no names on the pictures. _

_He isn't sure why it catches him so, sharply beneath the breast bone. A solid punch of sadness, guilt and something else that he can't identify. It's the feeling he gets when he sees Sam trying to sew up a hole in his faded jeans, or when John goes missing and Dean has to find him and patch up the wounds from another drunken fight. The feeling that he should be doing better, doing something. That's he's failed. _

_He doesn't like the sensation, the implication that he's in any way responsible for Cas's welfare. Cas isn't his son, his family or his boyfriend. Dean has never had a boyfriend for this very reason, that, and the fact that no one ever stuck around, not with John and Sam to factor in. _

_It was still a mystery to him why he'd even picked Cas up from the side of the road on the way into town. The night itself had been a strain, trying to buy a week's worth of groceries on twenty bucks, the memory of John's utter failure to Sam still fresh in his mind. But seeing the small, familiar figure trudging at the side of the road had made him feel grimly responsible, and so he'd stopped, he'd let Cas into the car and he had lent him his jacket whilst turning down a clear offer of sex. Really he should have been proud of himself for sticking to his guns on that score, but Cas had acted strangely afterwards – as if he'd gone cold on him all of a sudden. Almost as if Dean was worse than the sonofabitch who'd left Cas out on the edge of town with barely a thought. _

_Fortunately, Dean got through the entire school day without seeing Cas in the flesh, and he went about his duties with little interruption. _

_Of course it couldn't last. _

_About an hour after the end of school, Sam, who was as usual waiting for him to finish his work, came running through the halls to find him. Sam's nose is running blood down over his mouth and Dean's first thought is that his brother is running from one of his tormentors, but when Sam reaches him he grabs Dean's arm and starts pulling back the way he's just come running from. _

"_Sam, what the..."_

"_Dean, he's going to kill him." Sam looks at him with pleading, wide eyes. "Come, on!"_

_The sense of urgency is catching and he runs after his younger brother, past the gym, down another corridor and into a long, dark hall, which leads to the shop rooms. Sam comes to a stop but Dean runs past him, because now he can see what his brother has gotten worked up over. _

_Brian Summers half lifts Cas from the floor, then punches him straight in the mouth, sending him sprawling on the tile. There's already blood on Cas's face, Brian looks more than a little bruised, a cut above his eye bleeding steadily even as he kicks Cas in the stomach. _

_Dean doesn't stop to think, running forwards, pushing Brian back and throwing him up against the lockers, knocking the wind out of the teenager. As Brian slides down to the floor, wheezing, Dean turns back to where Cas is trying to get up off of the floor, he offers his hand to the boy but Cas ignores it pointedly, struggling to his feet unaided. He winces but crosses to where Brian is sprawled, stepping on the boys wrist as he bends to snatch something thin and gold from Brian's hand. _

_Cas stalks off without a word. _

"_You...fucking...whore!" Brain half gasps, half yells after him. _

"_That is enough." Dean snaps. "Principles office, now." He growls, knowing full well that the head will still be there. _

"_Get bent." Brian grunts, lifting himself to his feet. _

_Dean snatches the collar of his shirt and propels the struggling boy along. He should have done this weeks ago. He's picked on Sam enough, beat him up twice and now...Dean has no idea why the boy's attack on Cas makes him feel so strongly, but it's the last straw for him. _

"_Sam, wait by the car." He calls over his shoulder. Dean steers Brian through the empty halls, his age and strength far superior to the boys angry scuffling. The teenager soon turns to a different tactic. _

"_He likes you, you know." Brian drawls. _

_Dean doesn't comment._

"_You've fucked him, right?" The boy continues. "I mean, everyone has. Girls, guys...hell, I think a few of the teachers've gotten theirs."_

_Dean stays silent._

"_Oh...you have." Brian grins. _

"_Shut the hell up." Dean growls warningly. _

"_He's good right? I mean, takes it like a fucking pro...least he did last night."_

_Dean feels a lick of cold bile up the back of his throat. So this is who Cas was with before he got tossed out on the road._

"_Yeah, he does it for me sometimes." The teenager hisses conspiratorially. "Like a trained mutt you know? He comes when you call." He smirks nastily at his own joke and Dean shoves him onwards with perhaps more force than necessary. "Thought he couldn't get lower than screwing anything with a pulse...but you...wow, he really likes you." Brian laughs thickly. "I was winding him up, the idea of him fucking the janitor...some old, drop out, Piece. Of. Shit." Brian enunciates loudly. "It's hilarious...Cas took it kind of seriously."_

_There's nothing Dean can do to shut him up, nothing he can get away with anyhow, so he has to listen to the poison falling out of the boys mouth._

_So that was why Cas had tried to tear into the other boy, some comment that had struck too close to home. Although, given the cold shoulder he'd given to Dean in the car the previous night, he hadn't thought Cas liked him at all. Apparently, he was wrong. _

_Dean knocks on the principles door when they arrive. Just before Brian goes inside he smiles nastily and mutters._

"_White trash and the school slut. Talk about finding your level."_

_Dean goes outside to his car once he's lodged his complaint and gets into the front seat. Today is one of the few days he allows himself the drive to work, simply because he was so tired. Sam climbs in beside him, a tissue soaking up the blood from his nose._

"_You ok now?" Dean asks worriedly._

"_S'ok." Sam shrugs. "Castiel pulled him off before it got too bad."_

_Castiel. _

_Weird name, weird kid. _

"_He stepped in for you?"_

"_Yeah, he's not in any of my classes, I barely know him." Sam winces as he frowns. "He's a little...scary – but I think he used to be nice." _

_Dean makes a noncommittal sound, despite the fact that he's a little interested. _

"_Anyway, Brian broke his Mom's necklace and then Castiel went a little nuts on him." _

"_How'd you know it's his Mom's?" is perhaps not the most pertinent question, but it's the one Dean asks._

"_I saw her wearing it when she came in with the preacher before she died last year – Michael Novak, he's Castiel's dad." Sam tells him._

_Dean feels another blast of guilt – Castiel was not only like them, a boy with a deceased mother, but he was a preachers son. Dean feels a shiver run up his spine, wondering exactly what's going to come of the boy's apparent attraction to him above his other hook ups. Nothing good, that was for damn sure. _

"_Kinda sucks that he lost it though..." Sam continues lightly. "The cross fell down that old heating vent by the lockers, I think he only got the chain back off of Brian." Sam pauses. "Is he going to get back at me tomorrow?"_

_It takes Dean a second to get his thoughts back on track._

"_Brian is having a talk with the principle, so he shouldn't cause you any more trouble, tomorrow at least."_

_Sam nods slowly, taking that in. They drive in silence._

_Dean makes Sam his dinner and leaves him with his homework. John is already gone for the evening,_

_And Dean has something he needs to do. _


	7. Chapter 7

At some point there will come a chapter that does not contain or lead to sex. Some dialog filched from BtVS. As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

You grow up quick

When you grow up poor.

_Dean is elbow deep in the vent before he begins to question what he thinks he's doing. _

_Having let himself back into the school and taken his tools to the shop corridor Dean has gotten the vent open and is now searching for the tiny gold cross in a mess of lint, shreds of candy wrapper and spider webs. He's doing all this on his own time, it's not putting extra dollars into his pocket. He's also not doing it for anyone connected with him, it's all for some kid he's been with three times, and who's recently decided that Dean's not worth even his token courtesy. Cas actively seems to resent him now, and Dean wonders what he's hoping for by retrieving this trinket. _

_His fingers finally touch something slim and hard, and he draws the cross out. It's a small thing, plain gold on the front and with a small inscription on the back – 'My Dear' on the crossbeam and 'Rachel' down the centre. Rachel Novak. _

_Dean pockets the tiny thing and goes outside to where he's left his car. He could of course return the cross to Cas at school in the morning...but he has a funny feeling he knows where the kid is going to be. He shouldn't know that Cas will be down at the beach, and for some reason he wants to see if his instinct is right, like it's vitally important._

_So he drives. _

_He parks up on a scrubby lot just before the grass cutting that leads down to the sand. There's a dark blur on the beach some distance away and Dean feels both dread and elation that he was right about this, about Cas's temperament. _

_Dean sets his boots into the sand and walks over to where Cas is lying on the beach, a dark gray blanket over him, his head pillowed on his discarded jacket. Although the kid must hear him approaching, he doesn't open his eyes, even as Dean stands over him. The cuts on his face have closed, dark bruises forming already. There are roach ends in the sand, a purple plastic lighter and a palm sized tin with a snake woman printed on it._

"_Castiel." Dean says levelly._

"_Oh, so he thinks he knows me." Cas sighs, opening one eye like a lazy cat. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" _

_Dean takes the cross out of his pocket and drops it onto Cas's chest. _

_The boy raises his hand and picks it up, turning the metal to the light silently. _

"_So...yeah..." Dean shoves his hands into his jeans pockets and turns away. _

"_Wait." _

_Dean turns back, just in time to be struck by the skinny figure, Cas's arms clasp around him and the boy's forehead presses just below Dean's breast bone. Dean's arms come up automatically, the hug reminding him of Sam's exuberance, he holds Cas back and feels the boy's heart hammering against his chest._

"_Thank you." Cas sighs quietly. _

"_It was your Mom's." Dean mutters into the soft mess of dark hair under his chin._

_Cas nods into his chest. _

_Dean drops a kiss to the top of Cas's head, not really understanding why. Cas tilts his head up, bright blue eyes soft and wide, naively filled with gratitude and relief. _

"_Castiel." Dean murmurs._

_The boy nods, just a slight incline of his head before his eyes hood and looks at Dean's mouth, leaning up to touch his own to it softly. _

_Dean's body remains unresponsive, the tension in his spine only growing at Castiel's light touch. Still, he can tell the minute the familiar side of the boy takes over, the way Cas's mouth moves hungrily on his own, opening and sliding his tongue against the seam of Dean's lips, opening up his mouth and filling it with the taste of bitter smoke, surrounding it with the scrape of stubble. Cas's hands slide from Dean's back, down to his waist, skimming their flat palms over the back pockets of his jeans and the rounded flesh underneath. He presses into Dean and the older man yields in one, sudden loss of restraint, grasping the boy back, roughly, feasting on the smoky cavity of his mouth. _

_He's not exactly sure how they make it to the blanket, how he ends up sprawled over Cas, grinding down and panting as the boy rubs up against him like a cat eager for attention. Dean's skin is on fire, and the tiny, pleading sounds Cas makes as his hands pull at Dean's clothes as well as his own, only feed his desire. Yet when Cas unzips Dean's jeans and slides one long fingered hand inside, he's surprised to find the older man unaroused. He gives Dean a questioning look, but then goes back to sucking gently at his mouth, fingers working deftly to stroke him to hardness._

_Dean rubs a palm over the tented front of Cas's own jean's, drawing an eager moan from him. But still, despite Cas's ministrations, hardness eludes him. There's too much buzzing in his brain – the fight, the work, thirty dollars, rent calculations, guilt, fear, exhilaration. He's lying on a willing, wriggling body, hot and ready for whatever he'd care to do, and yet...he can't, and frustration makes a biting edge in him. _

"_I can't..." Dean pants, back sagging with disappointment and not a little humiliation. "It's...it's just not happening."_

_Cas sighs under him, head falling back onto the crumpled shape of his jacket. _

"_Turn over." Cas nudges him. When Dean doesn't comply he huffs out an aggrieved sound and pushes him over on to his back._

"_What..." Dean's head twists to the side, his teeth coming down onto his lower lips and Cas lowers his mouth between the stiff wings of his open jeans. The boy's mouth is fire and ice, his lips chilled by the evening air, the inside of him warm and welcoming. He sucks ardently, one hand stroking between Dean's legs until the larger man is bucking up, feeling himself finally begin to harden under Cas's patient attention._

_The boy pulls back with a wet pop, mouth reddened, his tongue chasing over his lips. He looks incredibly pleased with himself as he shucks off his own jeans, sheathing Dean in a condom in one easy motion. He strokes him one handed as he opens himself up, eyes closed and humming tunelessly as his fingers work. _

_Dean is barely sensible when Cas final mount him, sliding down with a soft grunt until he's straddling Dean, body flush to his. His breath hitches with every thrust downwards, yet still he sets a fast pace, riding hard as Dean holds his waist just for something to grip, to keep him sane as the world falls away into spinning darkness, the sound of the sea and grateful, deep groans. _

_Cas plants his hands in the sand on either side of Dean's head, laying his body out on top of the older man, his erection grinding the bare skin under Dean's shirt. Their mouths almost touch, and he's close enough that Dean can make out the individual lashes around his eyes, which are screwed shut. Cas leans closer, lips just shy of Dean's ear._

"_Tell me you love me." His voice is ragged, but clear, carrying the breathless need of that open, innocent boy Dean had glimpsed._

_Dean's hand snatches at Cas's back as he arches up, slamming in to his orgasm, head thrown back. _

_Cas moans, his own release spotting the front Dean's shirt as he luxuriates in it, moving sinuously. _

"_Tell me you want me." He gasps, shaking, even as he collapses on top of the older man, the broken, desire bled voice scratchy and raw from smoking._

_Dean disentangles them and lies on the rucked up blanket, getting his breath back and looking up at where the stars are coming out. Cas lies on his side, silent and introspective. Dean turns after a while, one arm going over the boy's waist, burying his face in Cas's tangled hair. _

"_I always want you." He mutters, feeling the smaller body curl close to his own. He wishes he had more to offer, more than the admission that this is not casual, that he wants Cas more than he can imagine wanting anyone else, ever._

_One disdainful blue eye looks at him._

"_Everybody does." He whispers._


	8. Chapter 8

_Wow, I've gone update crazy today, I'm clearly just a review whore. As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter._

_Where is your boy tonight? I hope he is a gentleman._

_Maybe he won't find out what I know,_

_You were the last good thing about this part of town._

Cas fingers the delicate chain around his throat as he lies, sleepless, in his untidy nest of a bed. A cigarette smoulders in his other hand. His body aches, there is sand lodged places he doesn't even want to picture, and yet despite these signs of revelry and the buzz still thumbing through him, he feels a heaviness in his chest that refuses to let him sleep.

"_Tell me you love me."_

Where had that come from? Cas was well aware, had been from the start, that love was not on the cards for him. He was a nothing, a zero on life's accounts. How could he be anything else? Knowing what he did about how he'd come into the world, how could he be more than one in a long line of someone else's fucks?

Yet tonight something, some part of him had begged Dean to see more in him, to feel more for him.

"_He could, you know he could." _Castiel's guileless voice tells him. _"He'd take such good care of us..."_

"Shut up." Castiel says, aloud.

"_He found Mom's cross." _Castiel reminds him.

Again Cas fingers the tiny trinket. Dean had found it for him, he had stopped Brian from hurting him, had allowed him in out of the rain and taken good care of him when they'd been together.

"_You see?" _Castiel tells him.

"He's a man." Cas tells the good twin that resides within him. "He's a practically middle aged, drop-out with a kid brother, a drunk dad, and one hell of cock, that's it." He sucks down some smoke, feeling it grate at him, tasting of coffee and copper, like blood.

"_He's good." _Castiel insists. _"He bears so much for them, he would suffer for us, he would..."_

"Toss us aside like a used rubber." Cas hisses, just to feel Castiel draw back from the crude words. He takes another drag. "Do you ever get tired of losing?"

"_Do you?" _Castiel responds.

"Awfully catty tonight, aren't we?" Cas chuckles, scratching the side of his face. "Where do you get that from?"

"_I'm you." _

"You're a tool." Cas yawns. "Go away and be quiet until finals."

Castiel doesn't respond.

"Good." Cas mutters to himself. "Hypocritical bastard."

He stubs out his cigarette and rolls over, trying to get some sleep.

"_I love him." _Castiel whispers miserably.

"Well, that's your own damn fault." Cas sneers, closing his eyes and burrowing into the pillows.

(-*-)

Cas doesn't feel like going to school the next day, or the next – so by the time he resurfaces people are over the news that Cas the stoner freak attempted to beat the crap out of Brian Summers. Mind you, Cas has smoked so much of his stash that he's almost forgotten the whole thing too. Therefore, Sam Winchester's interruption of his pleasant lunch period lying on the football field is not entirely welcome.

"Hey Castiel." Sam says awkwardly, his shadow throwing down over the teenager. Cas squints up at him.

"May we help you?" He rasps.

"No...I just...wanted to say thanks, for the other day." Sam stutters.

Cas looks up at him uncomprehendingly.

"When you stopped Brian from kicking my ass?" Sam elaborates.

Cas closes his eyes.

"I just wanted..." Sam says dumbly.

"You're welcome. Go away." Cas murmurs lazily.

Sam stays frozen where he is. Cas sighs.

"It was nothing." He says finally. "Thanks for getting your brother."

"I had to." Sam mutters. "He's Dean...he's the only person..."

"I know." Castiel says, and Cas frowns at the unsanctioned use of his mouth, his vocal chords. They'll have to talk about that later.

"So...are you sleeping with him?" Sam asks awkwardly.

Cas opens his eyes.

"Oh Sam, gossip is so unseemly." He murmurs.

"It's not..." Sam bites his lip. "No one else knows...but I saw him talking to you in the hall the other day."

Cas doesn't respond.

"If you're sleeping with him...can you stop...please?" Sam asks, an edge of worry in his voice.

"If you're jealous, I'm sure we can work something out." Cas lets his eyes fall closed again.

"That's...gross." Sam stutters. "I just mean...he's right, they might take me away if they find out about you."

Cas doesn't like how much that makes him worry.

"Do you think...does he like me?" There goes Castiel again with the talking.

"I don't know." Sam mutters. "He doesn't talk to me about..."

"Get lost Sammy." Cas sighs, and he hears the other boy hurry away. At last.

"_That was hurtful, you should be nicer to him." _

"Shut. The. Hell. Up." Cas growls to no one in particular.

Thanks to Castiel throwing all his issues into the works, by the end of school, Cas feels the need for some serious relaxation. Smoking up on the beach isn't going to cut it right now, what he needs is something loud and fast and ugly.

The club he chooses is on the opposite side of town to his home. It's in an old warehouse and the only name it has is 'Simmons' the name of the company that had once occupied the space. Inside it's all pink and red neon, like the inside of an animal. Cas drinks five shots at the bar and on the crushingly overfilled dance floor he grinds up against a tall guy with black hair and a pierced ear, another guy presses against his back and Cas lets him. The more the merrier.

The music is suicidally loud, pounding base through the floor and the walls until Cas is humming with it, feeling a strangers mouth against the back of his neck, unfamiliar hands sliding under his vest top. Guy number one raises a small white pill to Cas's lips and he takes it, chasing the chalky taste away with the shot that Guy number two raises to his lips.

"Do you want to get out of here?" Guy number one yells over the music.

Cas nods, feeling his body spin apart with the music and the drink, shedding all that heaviness.

Castiel is silent, perhaps out of scorn, perhaps out of shame. Well, fuck him. Somebody should.

The ear piercing guy, Cas forgets which one he was, jerks a thumb at the side door.

"Out back, five minutes" he yells.

Cas nods again and runs a hand through his sweat slicked hair. He's hot but his hand feels cold, it's odd and he smiles at the sensation, making his way out of the building and into the alley. He leans against the wall and checks his pockets. Three condoms and some lube, perfect. He doesn't worry about whether they'll want him together or one after the other. He's going to do it anyway, what's the point in working out what he'd prefer?

The two guys emerge at last, one holding a bottle of vodka.

"Ease you up a bit." He mutters nonsensically.

Cas would argue that he's already plenty easy, but the guy holds the sweating neck of the bottle to his mouth and so he takes a drink, feeling the fluid burn him deep inside. Both guys take a swallow and then they press close to him, hands running over the burning skin of his bare arms and pushing up under his top, touching his belly and back. The vest comes up and over his head, Cas closes his eyes and lets his head fall back. He so needed this.

Someone's mouth sucks at his neck, he can feel fingers tugging at his belt. A dirty laugh sounds beside him and Cas shivers despite himself. It's so cold out here, he wishes they were somewhere a little warmer.

A hand slides down the back of his jeans, at the same time another pair of hands pushing him downwards. Ah, two at a time it is then. Cas sucks his cheeks in and then opens his mouth wide, stretching after all was important, irrespective of the orifice.

Then...nothing, and Cas opens his eyes to find both guys looking behind him, mouths moving angrily. As if coming up from underwater, Cas's ears ring and gradually the sound unscrambles itself into sensible English.

"...uck off!" Earring guy spits.

"Get your own guy." The other snaps.

Then there's a kind of flurry which he can't keep track of, and the guys are backing away, one clutching his nose as it streams blood.

For some reason he finds this incredibly funny.

He's still snuffling with laughter when Dean grabs his shoulders and brings their faces very close.

"Cas?"

Dean shakes him a little and Cas finds this less funny and kind of...upsetting. The shaking feeling continues even when Dean's holding him still.

Suddenly all he wants to do is sleep.

"Cas? What the hell were you thinking..." The water that isn't really there fills his ears again and he loses the rest of the words. "...guys at the bar talking about spit roasting a seventeen..."

Cas sways.

"Cas! What did you take?"

"I don't kn..." and then he's falling, only Dean's there to catch him before he hits the cold, wet ground.

"_Thank God." _Castiel almost cries in relief.

Cas's last conscious thought is that at least Castiel can run things until he wakes up.


	9. Chapter 9

Oh...because you asked so nicely...here you go. As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

I can still remember what his face looked like.

When I found him in an alley in the middle of the night.

Tell me what you know.

Tell me what you've done now.

_Dean gets Cas back to his car and heaves him onto the back seat._

_Then he drives to the hospital, hell to leather. _

_The ER is a familiar sight to Dean Winchester, he's taken his Dad here three times, once for a broken arm and twice because his Dad had passed out and needed his stomach pumped. The nurses took his arrival, even burdened with Cas as he was, in their stride. They took the teenager away to start the gruelling process of sucking out his stomach contents, and Dean waiting in the hall on the same battered faux leather chair he'd sat in last time._

_This time thought, it's different, in that he's actually scared out of his mind for the kid. Before he could barely have cared less about John, but Cas...seeing him so out of it with those guys had been bad enough, but the moment the pale, clammy, boy had just dropped to the ground...Dean had honestly thought he was dead. _

"_Mr Winchester?" A nurse taps his shoulder some time later, rousing him from his thoughts. "He's out of the procedure room now, we've given him a bed while we call his folks."_

"_Thanks." He mutters sleepily._

"_You could go see him." She assures him. _

"_I'll do that." Dean nods, easing his aching body from the bed. _

_Cas is in a bed on a ward with six other beds in it. These are all unoccupied, but the curtains around his bed are still partially drawn, the scrub-blue fabric hanging limply and smelling of disinfectant. Cas looks small and pale in the bed, a white hospital gown covering his bare chest. His eyes are surrounded by dark shadows and his mouth looks sore, probably from the tube they'd shoved down there, though Dean knows enough to doubt it. _

_He reaches out and takes the boy's pale hand lightly. The air around him smells of vomit and bleach – but then, he's so used to it by now that it hardly bothers him. Cas doesn't stir. _

"_How could you be so stupid?" He mutters. "If I hadn't heard them...if I hadn't just needed to get away for the night...you'd be dead now..." he raises a hand and strokes the boy's dark hair. "I don't want you dead."_

_An awful weight wriggles into place inside of him, emotion he's wanted to deny ever since he saw Cas alone and wet at the side of the road._

"_I've already got my Dad doing his best to drink himself to death...Sam getting beaten up and hurt all the time...I can't have you hanging over that cliff as well." He rubs a thumb over Cas's lips. _

"_I'm sorry, ok? I'm sorry that I didn't say it...that I used you because my life has pretty much turned to crap these last few years...I'm sorry I didn't see how close you'd gotten to the edge...and I..." He bites down on the inside of his cheek._

"_Cas...I..." He licks his dry lips, looking down at the insensible boy. "I should have said before...but I..." He sinks into the chair by the bed and lowers his head to kiss Cas's limp hand, his fingers twining with Cas's unresisting ones. "I think I love you." He whispers. _

_He sits up, sucking in a harsh breath. _

"_What the fuck am I going to do?" _

"_I really don't know." Michael Novak says tightly. "Would you mind me taking that seat?"_

_Dean scrambles to his feet and looks wide eyed at Cas's father, the preacher. He's older than he'd thought he would be, going grey, thought there's enough dark hair left to make him look a little like Cas, despite his green eyes. _

"_I'm sorry...I can go, if you want..." Dean says awkwardly._

_Michael looks at him. "You love my son?"_

_Dean swallows._

"_Yes, Sir." He mutters. _

"_You must be almost twice his age."_

"_I'm twenty six." Dean says, eyes meeting Michael's defiantly. "I'm sorry...I..."_

"_He's seventeen." Michael says harshly, looking down at Cas. "Seventeen and...he must have slept with so many men, so many women in the past year." _

_Dean swallows the bitter taste in his mouth. _

"_All those people...and you're the only one here." Michael strokes his son's hair softly. "This room should be full of people...it would be, if half those men, half those women, gave a damn about my boy. They don't. No, they just use him...and throw him away..." He touches Cas's cheek. _

_Dean looks at the floor._

"_My Castiel was such a good boy." Michael purses his lips to keep his tears from falling. "Intelligent, good, kind...a kinder child you'd never meet...and now, he's here all alone, save for me, and you."_

_Michael turns his face towards Dean._

"_He deserves more than this." His face crumples. "My son deserves better than to be used and cast aside to suffer in an empty hospital room. He deserves someone...telling him that they love him, even when he's sleeping."_

_Dean blinks, surprised._

"_You can stay." Michael tells him. _

_Dean stays. _

_After an hour of watching the unconscious form of Cas lie in bed, his Father stands up and walks out of the room without a word. Dean assumes he's gone to get coffee. He gets the silence, he wouldn't want to talk to an almost thirty year old guy if he'd been screwing Sam._

_Castiel chooses to wake up a few minutes later with a deep, rumbling groan._

"_Cas?" Dean is at his side in an instant as the boy opens bright blue eyes and balls up on himself in confusion. _

"_How did I get here?" he rasps, throat raw. _

"_I drove you...you passed out, remember?" _

_Cas nods absently. _

"_Your Dad's here." Dean tells him._

_Cas closes his eyes._

"_He's pretty worried." Dean murmurs._

_Tears run out of the corners of Castiel's eyes. Dean touches his hand, holding it gently. _

"_You should have left me." Castiel says dully. _

_Dean's back stiffens._

"_No, I shouldn't have."_

"_He'd be better off if I was dead." Castiel says, half over him._

"_Your father loves you." Dean says softly. _

"_My father, doesn't know I exist." Cas laughs to himself, a cracked, dirty sound like an old, flat tire being bowled down the street. _

_Dean takes his shoulders and shakes him. Cas blinks up at him, fragile hands rising to grasp Dean's biceps. _

"_You...are not going to end up some, sad...sick...old addict, only kept out of pity." Dean grinds out. _

_Cas glares bitterly up at him. _

"_I'm already there Dean." _

_Dean lets him go and steps back. _

"_I'm not going anywhere." He says stubbornly, sitting in the chair and folding his arms. Cas rolls onto his side, away from Dean and glares at the wall. They stay like that for about half an hour and Dean wonders what the hell is keeping Cas's dad, because he really needs to get home to Sam. If it weren't for the fact that he'd saved Cas's life, he'd regret his decision to go out drinking in the one place he knew John would never turn up. As it is he hadn't managed to consume a drop before he'd heard those assholes talking at the bar._

_It looks like Cas has fallen asleep, so Dean gently touches his hand, just to feel the warmth and life in it. When Cas speaks it scares the crap out of him._

"_I heard you." The voice is soft again, the same voice that had begged for love even as it had taken pleasure. "Thank you...for telling me." _

"_Cas..." _

_The fingers tighten around his own._

"_Castiel." The boy tells him. "Everyone calls me Cas these days." _

_Dean sits, holding his hand as the trauma of the night sends the kid in the bed a little loopy. Castiel is under again by the time his father returns, snuffling softly in his sleep._

"_I have to go take care of my brother." Dean tells him as he surrenders his seat. "...would it be ok if...he's not going to be coming back to school any time soon, so..."_

"_You can come see him. Yes." Michael tells him. _

"_Thank you."_

"_I'm not doing it for you." The preacher tells him plainly. "Between you and the drugs, the drinking...I'd say you were the least of the problems I have to contend with."_

_It's those words that follow Dean all the way outside and home to where the apartment reeks, Sam is sleeping on the couch, and there's vomit on the floor._


	10. Chapter 10

BTW 'Me and Mine' the novel is now available on amazon, under ebooks (the one with clasped hands on a blue cover) so I'd be ecstatic if you guys went to check it out As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

http:/ .com/Me-and-Mine-ebook /dp/B005FBTYHO/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF 8&qid=1312214501&sr=1-5

(-*-)

_Dean cleans the apartment as he does every morning, swabbing up whisky soured vomit and spritzing air freshener that does little to nothing in the way of covering up the stench. He toasts cheap bread for Sam's breakfast and shakes his brother awake, turning down the bedcovers and listening to Sam bitch sleepily as he drags himself to the bathroom. It's only when Sam returns that Dean sees his face. _

"_Where did that come from?" he says, glaring at Sam's split lip and puffy cheek. _

_Sam winces, his eyes evasive as he looks anywhere but at his brother. "Where were you last night?"_

"_I asked first." Dean glowers. Sam crumples like a fistful of crackers._

"_John was mad at me." He says in a small voice. "He wanted the rent money..."_

"_You didn't give it to him?" Dean feels panic lance his heart in a hundred volt dash. _

"'_Course not." Sam says. "But I moved it from the back of the toilet to the box of condoms in your nightstand."_

_Dean's a little too pissed off to be uncomfortable about that._

"_So he hit you?" He growls. "Just that once?"_

"_Once in the face, twice in the stomach." Sam reports, like it happened to someone else – hell, this wasn't the first time John had smacked one of them out of sheer frustration or blind rage, but it had been so quiet for a while that Dean had allowed himself to hope. _

"_Jesus." Dean mutters, seizing the coffee pot, he stalks to his father's bedroom door, throws it open and walks in, heaving the drunken weight of his father out of bed and over onto the floor one handed. John groans and cracks swollen eyelids to glare up at him, muttering incoherent threats and curses._

_Dean pours yesterdays cold, greying brew over John's face, listening to the older man sputter and swear, scraping pungent grounds from his nose and squinting eyes._

"_Touch Sam again, and the next lot will be boiling." Dean snarls. _

_He backs off and John sits up, glowering as his eldest son reaches the door._

"_He should have given it to me." _

_Dean turns to glare at him._

"_That money puts this leaky damn roof over your drunk ass."_

_John drags himself to his feet, boots thudding onto the floor like bags of grit. His face is blanketed in scruff, his clothes marked with leaf mould and mud from where he'd likely fallen the previous night. _

"_I'm not going to let you talk to me like..."_

"_You're here because I allow it, John." Dean spits. "So stay out of the way and die fast, maybe Sam'll forgive you." He storms back into the living room, ignoring Sam's wince at the shouting, "He's the only one that will." _

_John doesn't follow, the rest of the apartment is too bright for him. _

"_I wish you two wouldn't go at each other." Sam mutters. "He didn't hit me that hard."_

_Dean looks at his brother and wonders when Sam got used to this being what his home was like. A wave of despair crashes over him, Sam isn't getting out of here unscathed, one way or another he'd bear the scars for life._

"_I wish you could be sure of not getting hit, at least here." Dean sighs, "Clearly, that's not happening."_

"_You didn't answer my question." Sam points out, gnawing toast and wincing at the pain in his lip. "Where were you last night?"_

"_Hospital." Dean says shortly. _

"_Why?" Sam's eyes widen._

"_I went to a club...thought I could get a drink without running into." He waves in the direction of John's room, ignoring Sam's distasteful frown. " Some guys were trying to take advantage of Castiel, they gave him a pill that wasn't...well, whatever it was meant to be, so I took him to the E.R."_

_Sam crunches in silence._

"_Got something to say?" Dean prompts._

"_I think it would be better if you left him alone." Sam says honestly. "We could get in trouble."_

_Dean sighs._

"_I know it's hard for you to understand...but...I'm not a freaking saint, Sam, ok? I want things, for myself...and, maybe I want Castiel around more than anyone else."_

"_Then be careful." Sam mutters. _

"_You think I want to lose you and wind up alone with John?" Dean huffs. "I'd be in prison for murder before the week was over."_

"_Better than getting put away for statutory." Sam mutters, going to collect his backpack._

_Dean can't think of a response to that. _

"_Shut up Sam." He mumbles to himself, putting the breakfast things into the sink._

_(-*-)_

_Of course the troubling influence that was Brian Summers had not been put to bed. But, Dean was relieved to find that his focus had moved from Sam to himself – he was less relieved to find the janitor closet locks filled with glue when he got there. In the end he had to snap the whole handle off, breaking the cheap plywood, as his tools were locked inside._

_Brian was leaning against the locker behind him by the time Dean was finished cleaning up the mess. _

"_Kids these days, huh?" Brian sighed. "Makes you sick, it really does."_

_Dean glares at him, waiting for the other foot to fall, and it does – straight onto his throat. _

"_So...I heard about Cassy passing out...did you think your boy toy was gonna die?" _

_Dean knew that Brian had no way of knowing that it was Dean who had taken Castiel to the hospital, that little piece of information was still private. But what the teen knew already was damaging enough. _

_He waits for Brian to get to the point, which he does in short order._

"_They'd probably take Sam away from you if you knew you were banging a kid younger than him..." Brian trails the sentence. "That kind of secret...worth a buck or two to keep it quiet."_

_The quip about Sam and Cas's ages got to him, Castiel was only ten months Sam's junior, not even a year younger – yet still...Dean felt suddenly like the shower he'd taken that morning had had no effect. He felt marked somehow. Soiled. _

"_What do you want?" Dean asks._

"_Three hundred." Brian tastes the words as he says them._

_Dean laughs under his breath. _

"_What's funny?" Brian's smirk flakes and reveals the peevishness underneath._

"_You've been picking on Sam for being white trash...and now you're trying to get money out of me." Dean drawls. "Not exactly in his league are you? Academically." _

_A fierce flush burns up Brian's neck, and for the first time Dean wonders if this all about Cas, rather than the ass kicking the kid had gotten. After all, Dean had stolen his favourite toy – and Brian really couldn't compete with him, not with his patchy skin and bleached Justin Beiber hair. Any pity Dean might have felt for the teenager was lost with his next words._

"_Three hundred. Or I tell the principle, the police...that you're screwing Cas." The kid spits, "Tomorrow, here, after school." _

_Then he's gone, and Dean's standing in front of the closet alone, wondering how the fuck the mess always winds up at his door. Though, in all fairness, he'd willingly brought this on himself. _

_After work, and feeling kind of nervous, Dean drove the route he remembered to Castiel's house, this time he doesn't stop at the corner, but drives just a little past it, gets out and goes up to the front door. It's a pretty nice house, double porch across the front, steps to the front door, welcome mat, blue door, matching trim, a cast iron bell with a white dove ornament. _

_He thinks of their own front door, cracked from the time John had lost his keys and tried to kick his way in. He feels a flush of shame for the spectre of his own home, for the sweat on his shirt and his jeans, stained from where he'd had to work on the impala. _

_He goes up the steps, opens the screen door and knocks on the blue one underneath, forgetting to use the bell and mentally kicking himself for that slip up. _

_Castiel answers._

_He opens the door, bare feet pointed like a dancers, long pale legs uncovered thanks to tatty pair of cargo shorts, so small as to barely reach past mid thigh, one of his many vests slung over the top. He looks small and pale still, but Dean can't help but admire him in the afternoon light._

"_Hey." The teen says, mouth creeping up at the side into a smile half shyness and half blatant seduction. He nudges the door open. "Come in."_

_Dean follows him into the house. _

_Inside it's just as perfect as out, white walls and light blue carpet, a little white china cross on the wall. Smells like fancy room scent, fig and Italian vanilla. _

_Castiel backs towards the stairs, holding his hand out. Dean takes it and Castiel twists, leading him upstairs. _

"_My dad's out." Castiel says as they reach his bedroom door. Inside it's shadowy and still, a quiet cave of a room with a messy bed and stacks of books and swathes of clothing on the floor. At home this would look messy, but here the effect is almost glamorous, the excesses of stuff alone... or maybe it's the musky odour of Cas that dominates the room – A bed slept in, tobacco smoked and a libido indulged._

"_You weren't at school...still feeling bad?"_

"_No..." He frowns as if trying to pinpoint exactly how he feels. "I'm good, very good." He comes closer and Dean can smell the weed on him. Castiel kisses him bluntly. "You saved me." He smiles and kisses him again._

_Dean slowly moves away and Cas frowns._

"_What?" _

"_Castiel..." does he imagine the flinch at the use of his full name? "Last night...you practically said you wished you'd died there...and now..."_

"_I can't change my mind?"_

"_This isn't your mind talking." Dean tells him. "This – is a joint, maybe two." _

_Cas smirks, holds up three fingers before he flops down on the bed, folding himself elegantly – origami in action. "I was bored." He glances up at Dean. "I thought if I let you in you'd want to...do something not boring."_

_Dean lies down next to him and tugs Cas against him, pulling the soft, smoky duvet over them both. Castiel sighs against his chest, wriggling with anticipation, after a second he looks at Dean through the muzzy, undercover shadows. _

"_Are we doing this or not?" He murmurs. _

_Dean rolls him onto the mattress and covers him with his own body. Cas mewls in satisfaction, reaching up and cupping Dean's ass with his hands. But Dean does nothing more than kiss him, lazily, shifting them so that he can hold Cas's body gently. _

_Cas stiffens. "Oh." He mutters, and for a second Dean thinks he's going to get pushed away, then awkward arms return the embrace, softening and stroking his back lightly. _

"_You're a weird guy." Cas whispers. _

_Dean breathes the scent of him in gently. _

"_You told me you loved me." Castiel murmurs. _

"_I did." _

"_I love you too." He confides._

_Dean doesn't remember when he last heard that, when it wasn't coming from Sam._


	11. Chapter 11

BTW 'Me and Mine' the novel is now available on amazon, under ebooks, there's a link in my profile. so I'd be ecstatic if you guys went to check it out

As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

_I was confused by the birds and the bees, forgetting if I meant it._

_Baby, did you forget to take your meds?_

After a while Cas stops minding that they aren't having sex. It feels good regardless, being handled so surely, held close enough that he can feel Dean's pulse shiver through his skin_ , _the telling hardness that is more than the seam of his jeans, pressing into Cas's hip and reminding him that the desire is still there. It's comforting, complimenting his own arousal. He inhales against the triangle of tanned skin at the v-neck of the older man's t-shirt. Dipping his head a little and unable to stop himself from flicking his tongue wickedly over the smooth skin. Dean shivers, hands clenching on his back.

"So...we're really never going to fuck again?" Cas muses, feeling Dean shift next to him, but unwilling to let go of his warm bulk.

"Not never." Dean's hot breath stirs the hair at the back of Cas's neck.

"Good." Cas stretches as if the issue is concluded, which for him it kind of is.

Castiel comes to the fore like iron filings drawn by Dean's magnetic warmth, lining the parts of Cas's body that are touching the other man. Cas can sense that other part of him, the heart turning devotion it already feels. It scares him, the depth of that love, like looking into a well – so far down. No hope of escape. Claustrophobic shaft with its view of lonely sky.

He had loved his mother, and look at what she had done to him. Dean wasn't even his blood.

"If you're sober." Dean mutters, and inwardly Cas groans. Of course there were conditions. Everyone had rules. It was so tiresome.

Dean senses his distaste.

"I don't want you to go with people like those guys at the club, or that Brian asshole...and I want you to be clean and sober. No drugs, no drink."

"If I do..." Cas slides out of Dean's arms, despite Castiel's quiet sound of protest, he straddles Dean, gazing at him watchfully in the under-cover darkness. "I get you...whenever I want?"

Dean looks up at him, a mixed up expression of desire and grief on his face that makes Cas's stomach twist and the Castiel part of him ache with sorrow.

"You already have me."

Cas doesn't know what to say to that, so he retreats, lying down beside Dean once more and tuck their limbs together.

"Why is Brian such an asshole?" He asks after a while, "I mean, of all the people I've been with, he was hardly the worst." Which was true, there'd been assholes who wouldn't use protection, who'd been really lazy with the prep and bitten him during – add to that the psycho goth girl...he'd had his fair share of weird and worthless.

"He beat you up." Dean points out. "And treated you like...and now he wants money."

"Money?"

"He's going to tell...everyone." Dean's voice carries the weight of hopelessness. "Unless I can find three hundred dollars for him. By tomorrow."

"You can't pay him?" Cas asks

"No, I can't." Dean sighs. "My options are either beat him senseless or...hope he's bluffing." Dean stiffens. "Which he probably isn't, the vindictive little shit."

Cas sits up.

"No...this..." He pushes the sheets off, feeling stifled and scrambles to the corner of the bed. He hadn't meant for this to happen. "Dean, you could lose Sam."

"I know." Dean is the picture of despair.

"So...why are you here?" Cas blurts. "This is...just making it worse for yourself."

"I'm here because for some reason, I can't seem to stay away from you." Dean says, deadly serious.

"Well you should you..." Unbidden tears run into his eyes, he swipes them away. Fucking Castiel and his pure fluids. "I didn't want this to happen..." his voice shakes and to his horror more tears are coming, he can feel it. "Dean..."

"It's not your fault. " Dean looks like he wants to comfort him, but resists, for which Cas is grateful, he doesn't know what would happen if Dean touched him right now. "I'm the adult here."

"No...I'm terrible, ok? I'm..." Cas feels all of Castiel's disgust break over him like an abscess bursting. "I ruined your family."

"My Dad ruined my family." Dean assures him. "You...you're here, and I love you – you didn't ruin anything."

Cas curls in on himself.

"You are kind of ...all over the place today though." Dean says softly. "I keep...getting all these mixed signals from you."

"I'm just a little...something's wrong, with me. Everything." Cas wipes away the last of his tears and tries for a smirk, failing. "I'm a bit...divided on you."

"You don't have to be." Dean mutters, embarrassed. "I'm not going anywhere."

How can he explain that this is the problem, that having Dean around, having him in his life, is courting disaster. He's an albatross – bad luck to whoever takes him in.

Cas gets off the bed and retrieves a plastic box from under the mattress corner. He shoves it towards Dean, who opens it to reveal a few odd coloured pills, some white tablets and a lump of something brownish.

"That's at least a hundred." Cas tells him. "If I sell it to the right person...I have another hundred in cash around here...more in the bank."

Dean looks at him and Castiel revels in the appreciation there.

"Just until we can think of a way to get rid of him." Cas says lamely.

"Cas..." Dean puts the box aside and leans over to hug him, and at the strong, enfolding touch Cas feels Castiel burrow closer to the surface, dangerously close. "Thank you."

"It's fine." Cas struggles not to bury himself in Dean, tries not to forget his place.

"No, it's better." Dean squeezes his shoulder like a friend. "No one does stuff like this for me."

"They should." Castiel murmurs, squashing Cas back and away, like the two dimensional thing he is, a construction of sweat and pills and cigarette papers.

When Dean kisses him, it's a sweet touch of lips, the older man embarrassed by his feelings, and Castiel hungry for simple contact after being so long starved for simple compassion.

Cas sulks at the back of his mind like a crow in the rain.

"_When he finds out what we are, what she was – he'll hate us."_

"No he won't" Castiel insists silently.

"_He will." _Cas assures him_. "Father will too – we should leave them be Castiel."_

But Castiel refuses to listen.

_Confused yet? Excellent. I'll try to update again really soon, in apology for this short chapter. In the mean time, feel free to tweet me. _


	12. Chapter 12

BTW 'Me and Mine' the novel is now available on amazon, under ebooks, there's a link in my profile. so I'd be ecstatic if you guys went to check it out

As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

_God makes no mistakes,_

_I'm on the right track baby, _

_I was born this way._

Castiel has a lot on his mind, not the least of it is Cas who has started crying out for something, anything to dull the feelings that grow stronger with each sober hour. No drugs have entered his system in three days, and he's starting the feel the fallout of a year's heavy dependency. Michael has noticed the change in his son, the sickly but alert appearance of him, coupled with the fact that he's home for the entire night – sleeping in bed alone.

Dean stops by after his work at the school is completed most evenings. Michael himself has duties at the church and so never sees the older man, but there's evidence of him; two coffee cups on the draining board, the scent of lemon pledge and floor polish in the air, and of course Castiel's strange reversion to his former self, or a close approximation.

Of course, Dean is only the most recent source of conflict in Castiel.

The original reason for his hectic rush into drunken oblivion still haunted him, and his struggles to remain sober had allowed it crawl out of the woodwork. As much as Castiel wished he didn't have to think about it, he did. It was there every time he spoke to his Father, standing between them like a miasma of rot. The same uneasy influence worked on him even when he was alone with Dean.

Castiel was enjoying his time with Dean a great deal. For the last few days Dean had come to him after work, had sipped coffee with him in the pristine living room and had gone upstairs to bed with him. All that comforting, strong, warm flesh had wrapped around him, stilling for a while the shivers and aches of withdrawal, and Castiel had experienced for the first time what it felt to be loved.

Still there was a shadow over everything.

Thankfully though, Brian had been satisfied with his money for a full week until he demanded more. Dean came to Castiel that night and the two of them lay still in his rumpled bed, trying to come up with a plan.

"He wants five hundred now...we can't keep paying him off." Dean looks up at the ceiling, one hand stroking Castiel's hair as the teenager looks up at him, the soft cotton of Dean's shirt under one cheek.

"I had an idea." Castiel admits.

"...I'm not going to like it am I?" Dean guesses.

"Probably not." Castiel admits softly. "But that makes two of us..." He bites the edge of his lip in a gesture he'd forgotten he performed when nervous – it's been a while since he felt enough to be nervous. "I thought, if we could get some dirt on him – he'd leave us be."

Dean stays silent, waiting for the other foot to fall.

"His parents are active at the church, very religious...if we, I mean – if I did something with him..."

"No."

"...and you got it on tape..."

"I said 'no' Cas." Dean sits up and looks down at him. "It's not worth doing that to you."

"Sam's worth everything to you." Castiel says unwaveringly.

"So are you." Dean looks so torn as he says it that Castiel cannot doubt that it's the truth.

Inwardly he sighs, knowing that the moment he's most dreaded has come.

"_Don't"_ Cas argues plaintively.

"Dean...I'm not worth you losing your family over." Dean looks set to argue but Castiel raises a hand to stop him. "You think I'm good, or that I was...that I'm the preacher's son who...went off the rails? But I'm not. You think I have goodness...bred into me, but I don't."

Dean looks confused, a plain desire to comfort obvious on his face, still Castiel pushes on.

"When I told you, at the hospital – that my Father doesn't know me? I wasn't being dramatic...I mean, I was but..." He clenches the fabric of the bedspread in one had. "My father was a heroin addict from Detroit. Some guy with a devil tattoo and an addiction just like hers. "

Dean sits in stunned silence.

"My Mom was a junkie, she was forced into rehab. She met my father there and a month or so after I was conceived she met the preacher, Michael." Castiel lets the whole story out in a single breath. "He ministered there and because she was clean by then, Michael fel in love with her. He brought her back here and when she had me...she told him I was his. I was late so I guess it was convincing enough."

"Who told you that?" Dean asks softly.

"My mom." Castiel feels tears gathering in his eyes, hates himself for how easily they come. "She...there was an accident and while she was in the ICU she asked to see me, and she told me. She said it was in case I ever needed like...a kidney or if I got some genetic disease...but I think she knew. She knew she was dying and she didn't want to take it with her. And she asked me never to tell my father."

"Castiel...that's..."

"I hated her." Castiel continues. "Right then I thought...I could just about kill her, for doing that to me. For lying to me all that time. For putting that on me...only I didn't have to, she died in the night." He remembers the punch of guilt and elation when he'd heard the news. Feels sickened by his own incongruous relief at that moment all over again. "It was the last thing we ever spoke about...and I felt...glad, that she was dead." He looks as repulsed as he feels . "I was glad, that my mother was dead." He looks up at Dean. "So...don't tell me that I can mean as much to you as Sam. Because...I'm born, to be nothing."

Dean's arms around him comes as a shock, so sudden is the movement, but Castiel clings to him, buries his face against Dean's neck as the older man shushes him, calming him.

"It's not your fault." Dean whispers. "It's not your fault how you got here...and you can't blame yourself for feeling something fucked up, in such a fucked up situation." He squeezes him gently. "Just because your Dad was some addict, it doesn't mean you have to be – you can be..."

Castiel feels the strain in the older man, the need to believe that children were more than just the sum of their parent's flaws. Empathy and Sympathy bubble over and before Castiel can understand what he's about to do – he twists and catches Dean's mouth, kissing him and feeling the torment in them both flavour the moment with bitter sweetness.

For the first time it's not about hunger, about the need to lose himself in someone else. It's about pooling all their despair together, reaching into someone else and matching up their wounds, finding the similarities in their scars.

Dean doesn't call him on it when Castiel pulls his shirt off over his head, urging Dean to do the same. For the first time, on a bed, in the semidarkness of the cloth swaddled window, Castiel makes love, and the intensity is almost frightening. The pleasure obviously, which he has never felt so fiercely, so directly without the barrier of the drugs in him. But also the nearness of Dean, the skin on skin closeness and the feeling of his confession around them, binding them closer. Bringing them together.

The secret is out now.

The walls between Cas and Castiel crash down.

He is alone inside his mind, but he is not alone in his secret shame.


	13. Chapter 13

As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter.

Did you know you were a saint?

What a shameful fall from grace,

But I'll catch you.

I'll catch you.

_Dean catches Sam's surprised look when he shows up with a week's groceries, plus pizza and a six pack of brand name soda. _

"_Is it my birthday?" Sam asks, watching his brother put steaming slices onto plates. John is gone, as usual for this time of night, and they have the place to themselves. _

"_Smart ass." Dean slides a can across the kitchen counter, "I can't treat now and again?"_

_Sam shrugs, cracks open the soda and takes a drink. "So...this is nothing to do with the fact you've been out a lot recently?"_

_Dean pauses in his efforts with the pizza. _

"_It's ok." Sam assures him quietly. "I get it, you have a life."_

"_Not at your expense." Dean puts the empty box to one side. "Sam, if you want we around more..."_

"_No." Sam holds up his hands defensively. "It's fine, you need to go out and...it's kind of good that you're...dating, not just..." Sam blushes like a twelve year old. _

"_Yeah, that other thing." Dean fills in. "It is nice."_

"_Good." Sam confirms inanely. _

_They each pick up a slice of pizza and start to eat. Dean counts the seconds in his head._

"_It's with Cas, right?" Sam finally breaks the silence. "You're...with, Cas?"_

"_Yeah." Dean chews his pizza meditatively._

"_And..." Sam sighs. "I'm really trying to be ok about this but...he's my age Dean – younger."_

"_I know." Dean looks up at his brother. "Believe me it makes me feel all kinds of creepy knowing that."_

_Sam waits for the rest._

"_He's different to you." Dean says awkwardly. "To any of the other..."_

"_Kids his age?" Sam mutters._

"_Hey – knock it off." Dean glares. "I'm trying here...because, Castiel is different, he reminds me..." He half smiles bitterly. "Of me, back when I was your age."_

_Sam looks suitably chastened._

"_Kind of like he had to grow up too fast, like a load of crap got dumped on him that he didn't deserve." Dean looks sightlessly down at his plate. "I feel like I can make it better...and he makes me better. That's it."_

"_Dean...I'm..."_

"_You don't have to be sorry." Dean's head snaps up. "You're my brother, having me take care of you is a right." Dean means it, Sam will always be entitled to everything he has to give, he's family, and he's innocent. "but...I'm twenty-six...and it's kind of nice to have someone around who isn't family...or a one night stand...it makes me feel normal, that I can still meet normal people."_

"_Cas never seemed exactly normal." Sam says gently, raising his eyebrow. _

"_He was." Dean shrugs. "And he's getting better."_

_Sam lets it slide after that. They eat the rest of the pizza and drink their way through the soda, Sam gets out an ancient set of scrabble and forces Dean to play best of three with him. It's a nice way to spend an evening, still, when Dean eventually turns in, all he can think of is what tomorrow night will bring. _

_Castiel has assured him that the plan will be worth it, that it'll get Brian off their backs forever, and that Dean will no longer be in danger of losing Sam. Still, Dean finds the idea of taping Castiel with Brian to be particularly sickening. It adds more fuel to guilt that's burning a hole in his gut – first he'd used Cas for sex, and now Castiel was going to be the one whoring himself to make the consequences of that go away. _

_Dean's mood is not improved by the fact that John wakes him up at two am. _

_He opens his eyes to the darkness of his room, seeing the shadowed figure in his doorway as soon as he's fully awake. _

"_Dean?"_

"_What it is?" Dean levers himself into a sitting position, swiping a hand over his eyes. _

"_I'm sorry son..." John whispers brokenly, and inwardly, Dean stiffens. Almost worse than his rage, than his indifference, are John's fleeting moments of guilt. _

"_Go to bed." Dean whispers, not unkindly. "We'll talk tomorrow." He promises, knowing full well that they won't .To his discomfort, John comes closer, hovering near the edge of the bed._

"_I know I should have done better, for you – after your Mom died." There's a small, rough sound that Dean realises is a sob. This he cannot deal with. Taking care of Sam, paying the bills and cleaning up the puke – but please God not this, God spare him his Father's tears in the middle of the night. _

"_I should have...If I'd held on for a while, maybe things wouldn't have ended so badly, back in Lawrence." _

"_Dad." Dean uses the abandoned title gently. "Why don't you go to bed – you're tired."_

"_I'm going to do better Dean, I promise." John's words crumple with his growing distress, and Dean leans forward to touch his shoulder, gently smoothing the creased fabric. _

"_I know." He whispers. "You'll get better, we've almost saved up enough money." _

"_I'm so sorry." John says again, voice muffled and cracking._

"_I know." Dean shuffles across the bed and puts his arm around him, smelling whiskey as he does so. "Let's get to bed, ok?"_

_He takes John into his own room and sits him on the bed, listening to a continuous stream of apologies and pleading as he does so. John falls asleep almost instantly, once Dean's laid him out and taken his boots off. _

_When he goes back to bed he finds sleep alludes him, he stares at the ceiling until the alarm goes and he gets up to make breakfast for Sam. There's no vomit to clean up this morning, though, given a choice between rancid stomach acid and seeing his father a babbling drunken mess? He'd take the puke. Every time. _

"_I heard Dad last night." Sam says on the drive to school. They're driving today, he's been driving more, it makes getting to Castiel's after school easier. _

"_Oh." Dean says noncommittally. _

"_At least he's sorry." Sam mutters._

"_I think if he really was, he'd stop." Dean fixes his eyes on the road._

"_Maybe he can't." _

"_Maybe. Not by himself. But he's had help, he's had us and Bobby...Pastor Jim." Dean swallows a wave of resentment. "Maybe if he tried harder he'd get better, wishing doesn't help anyone."_

"_It's hard." Sam sticks up for John, someone has to, and Dean's sick of trying. "He lost Mom, lost more than we did...I don't even remember her."_

_Dean touches Sam's hand, eyes still on the road. "You remember the important stuff – the good stuff."_

"_But Dad lost his wife, his house...he lost so much." Sam's getting himself upset, he does this sometimes, when the reality of their situation creeps out from behind all the day to day crap and stares him full in the eye – bloodshot and ugly._

"_Dad didn't lose all that much." Dean says, because he remembers. He might have been a kid, but some things stick with you, they cut through the peach fuzz of childhood and they stay under your skin like a school yard splinter._

"_How do you know?" Sam says stubbornly. Still so young, still ready to believe that the father who hits him, who yells at him for hiding the money they need to live, could have been a decent man – changed at the flick of a switch. The lighting of a match._

"_Dad drank before the fire." Dean says slowly, quietly. "I remember smelling it on him, seeing him drunk...he had this, long before Mom died."_

_Sam goes quiet after that. _

_Dean doesn't tell him the rest._

_The things he'd overheard between Bobby and Pastor Jim. About the fire. The investigation._

_The cigarette and the glass of whiskey. _

_Sam doesn't need to know about that._

_Let him believe in good a little while longer; in the John Winchester of myth – good father, doting widower. _

_The truth hurt like a bitch, and once you got it – there was never any relief. _


	14. Chapter 14

_As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter. BTW there's a plot thing coming up – please don't tell me it doesn't make sense, I know I'm taking a risk with it but, you've been warned. Trust me when I say I've considered it upside and down._

_Also, it's been commented that as Sam is nearly of age, it isn't such a big deal that he might be taken out of Dean's care. I kind of took the view that any time apart from Sam would kind of suck for both of them, and that Dean is uber protective. _

Castiel is not entirely happy about the plan.

It was his plan, and it was he who had set this in motion. Even so, it left him uneasy, and in all honesty, a little afraid.

He was afraid for two reasons. Firstly, that after he'd done what he was about to do, Dean wouldn't be able to look at him, that he'd lose Dean in trying to keep him. Secondly, he was afraid that despite everything, despite all his efforts – Cas might worm his way to the surface again. That he'd lose control and plummet back down into the dark fog that had held him for over a year.

There was also the slight concern that even with the video of him and Brian, that the other boy might not let it go.

Castiel is trying to think of the sex part as little as possible.

It's getting a little difficult to do that now that he's in Brian's car.

Even getting this far was hard. Brian had been edgy and suspicious when Castiel had approached him just outside of the school. He'd tried his best to act like his old self, by which he meant his new self – vague and hot and needy. It had worked quite well, especially after he'd offered Brian a small amount of weed to ease the way, as it were. Brian had accepted his offer eagerly after that, which was understandable – it had been a while since he'd been with anyone. Cas may have constituted the bottom of the barrel, but he was something.

So now here they were, the abandoned lot Brian had taken him to before. Brian turns to him, breath smelling sourly of the weed and unscrubbed teeth.

"We're here." Brian says pointedly. "You brought the stuff?"

Castiel takes the condom out of his pocket, it's a familiar gesture, and yet it's so strange at the same time. Alien. Just like the act he's about to perform. He remembers the way Dean had felt, on top of him and under the soft linens of his bed. The reverent way they'd moved together, the way Dean had sighed into his mouth, said his name and held him, just held on to him after.

He blinks the memory away. It won't help, not now, to be thinking of that.

He knows Dean is somewhere nearby, by the broken brick wall with the video camera Castiel had lent him. He'd followed them in the impala, a distance away, so that Castiel hadn't even noticed his presence. Still, he trusts that he's out there, waiting.

He tears open the condom packet, holds the slick disk of rubber, like a cartilage hoop, in one hand, the other hand going to the fly of Brian's jeans. The zipper comes down with a rasp and the other boy tips his head lazily against the headrest, sighing impatiently as Castiel pulls open the slit in his underwear and guiding his half hard cock out into the paling evening light.

He can't remember why this had ever been fun.

The condom, regular, tasteless and slippery, goes on over the blotchy flesh. Castiel prevents him from shivering, just, as he jacks Brian twice, stroking blood up into the shaft. The other boy groans soft, greedily.

"Make it last longer this time." He mutters.

Castiel swallows his retort, glances at the window, dips down and slides his lips over the lukewarm latex, lube tasting like petroleum on his tongue as he rubs it the way he remembers doing. Brian moans and Castiel closes his eyes, he doesn't want to see what this boy looks like when he comes.

It happens soon enough. Though not entirely _soon _enough – Castiel's neck hurts, his chin is wet with spittle, and his nose full of the stink of the other boy's not entirely fresh groin. He pulls off once the spasms between his lips are done, leaving Brian to take the condom off.

He really, really wishes he had some mouthwash.

Brian zips up and Castiel holds his breath, the unpleasant part is over, the hard part just beginning.

"You getting out or what?" Brian asks pointedly.

"I want to ask you something." Castiel mutters.

"This isn't about me doing you again is it? Because I already told you – I'm not a fag." Brian sneers.

"I just..." Castiel falters. "I want to ask you...not to tell anyone about Dean Winchester...and me."

"Ooh." Brian rolls the sound around his mouth. "He's got you doing his dirty work? Big man."

Castiel bristles.

"So this is what? A bribe?" Brian quirks his eyebrow. "Because, giving me what I already get free...and a lousy lay at that – s'not really an incentive."

Castiel looks at the unpleasant asshole who he'd willingly given himself to time after time, wondering what the hell had been wrong with him.

Wondering how Dean had fixed it.

"Actually, it's a warning." Castiel says levelly. "Stay away from Dean and me...or he'll show the video of this little hook up – to your parents." Castiel looks Brian in the eye, viciously happy to see the sudden panic there. "Maybe the rest of the church...the school...but if you leave us alone? We'll keep it to ourselves."

Brian stays still for a long moment.

"Get. Out." He finally spits.

Castiel pauses.

"I'll leave you and your asshole boyfriend alone." Brian snarls. "Get out of my fucking car."

Castiel slides out of the car and Brian takes off before he's even closed the door properly.

He stands alone in the empty lot, it's getting dark, cold, and his mouth still tastes like Vaseline. He coughs, spits onto the ground, feeling shaky and above all, dirty.

"Castiel?" Dean comes jogging over.

"Please tell me you got that?" Castiel murmurs.

"Yeah."

Castiel looks up and catches Dean's eye, noting the half nauseated, half saddened look there. Dean clears his throat, stuffs the small, silver camera into his jeans pocket and puts his arms around Castiel comfortingly. The teenager gladly gives himself over to their comfort, laying his head against Dean's shoulder.

"I'm so sorry." Dean presses his nose to the top of Castiel's head.

Castiel squeezes him around the waist, a silent comfort to the taller man's guilt. He draws back a little.

"Come home with me." He whispers.

Dean nods, hand touching the side of Castiel's face, thumb tracing his reddened lips. He winces. Castiel reaches up and takes Dean's hand.

"Come on." He urges gently.

Dean takes Castiel to the impala, parked just around the corner. Inside, on the front seat, is a half sized bottle of Listerine. Castiel picks it up.

"Uh, yeah." Dean looks awkward. "That's meant to be...I was trying to do something nice not, you know...like an ass."

Castiel unscrews the top, takes a mouthful and washes the slick taste of the condom from his mouth, spitting onto the gravel, watching the bright green liquid seep into the ground.

"Thanks." He says, meaning it and marshalling a smile.

They get into the car, driving back to Castiel's house. Halfway through the drive he sighs, leaning against Dean and sliding down until his head's in the older man's lap, knees bent on the seat. Dean drops a hand down and strokes his hair. Castiel sighs under the touch, feeling it unwind the fierce tension in him, letting him relax for the first time all day.

"Dean?" Castiel murmurs, feeling the warm denim under his cheek move with Dean's shifting muscles.

"Yeah?" Dean glances down at him.

"When we get back...make love to me." Castiel feels his stomach twist in anxiety. "Please?"

There's a pause, during which Castiel feels a dart of panic. Knowing that, if Dean says no, it'll be the end of him.

Dean's finger strokes down his cheek and Castiel closes his eyes.

"I love you, you know that." Dean says quietly. "I'll always, love you."

Castiel breathes the scent of him in, basks in the warm interior of the car. He strokes his hand along Dean's thigh. Once they reach his house, they go upstairs, put the camera in the top drawer of his dresser and curl up together on the bed.

After a while, Castiel gets up, takes a shower and returns swamped by a large blue towel. Dean rubs his hair dry and lays him out on the bed, clean and warm and smooth. When they kiss it's like the first time, all the past clashes of lips and tongue disappearing, replaced by this one, perfect kiss.

Right then Castiel decides he never wants anybody else. Only this. Always.


	15. Chapter 15

_As always you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter. And details of my novel 'Me and Mine' can be found on my profile page. _

Castiel sits down with Michael the next morning, knowing that somewhere, across town, Dean is waking up and preparing for work. The idea is oddly comforting, and Castiel is in a fair mood, awake and ready for school on time. The preacher seems to be in a good mood as well, which makes the turn their morning conversation takes slightly unexpected.

"Am I to understand that Dean has been here, very frequently, as of late?" His father asks over their morning cereal and juice ritual. Breakfast together had been reinstated with Castiel's sobriety, something which he finds distinctly heartening.

"Yes." Castiel considers his words carefully. "I like him, a lot."

"More than that." His father prompts gently.

Castiel feels a tender place in his chest grown warm and restless.

"I love him." He tells Michael.

His father nods, unsurprised and approving. "Do you have plans? With him, for when you go to college?" He asks politely.

"We haven't discussed it." Castiel replies evenly. "But...he has his Father to look after, and I should think he'd want to be near Sam – if Sam can afford to go to college."

"I think Dean would see to it that Sam could afford college." Michael points out. "He seems to have the boy's best interests at the heart of him."

Castiel feels a swelling of pride on Dean's behalf. "He does. He'd do anything for Sam."

"And for his father." Michael adds sadly. "I feel quite sorry for him in that respect – to be bound to his family like that." At Castiel surprised look his father inclines his head sadly. "I'm afraid John Winchester's behaviour is common knowledge amongst most of the town."

"Yet no one seems inclined to help them." Castiel frowns down at his saturated bran flakes.

"When they first came to town they tried." Michael sighs. "Dean's...most private about his family, he doesn't accept help easily."

"He does from me." Castiel says softly.

Michael smiles slightly. "I think you're a different case, son."

Castiel isn't surprised at how happy that makes him. Knowing that, to Dean, he might as well be entirely separate from the rest of the town – from the rest of the people Dean had been with. He's different. Special.

It's a feeling he's never had before.

(-*-)

_Dean's morning runs as usual, with the only exception being the absence of John and the habitual puddle of vomit. It's not the first time his father has been too drunk or too unconscious to get home before morning, so Dean isn't exactly worried when he and Sam leave to walk to school. John, like the albatross he was, always turned up eventually, he was never absent for long. _

_Dean had a view patches of graffiti to clean up, floors to polish and new numbers to screw to some of the classroom doors. The only high point, that is, the only thing different to any other day, was the appearance of Castiel some time before the end of school. The teen had caught the hallway at its most deserted, and approached Dean cautiously._

"_Hey." Dean smiles tiredly, trying to manoeuvre the floor buffer into the janitors closet. _

"_Hi." Castiel took the door, holding it open shyly and watching Dean push the machine into the small closet. "How's your day been?" he asks politely._

_Dean shrugs. "Same old. Someone wrote something about Satan on that big statue of Jesus in the parking lot, the heaters still aren't working right, oh, and my Dad never came home last night."_

_Castiel frowns. "Is that...normal?"_

_Dean huffs to himself. "Not of late – but back when I was about seven? He'd disappear for days. Drove my Mom crazy." He catches Castiel's look. "What?" _

"_Nothing..." Castiel looks embarrassed. "You just...you never talk about what it was like, before."_

"_Before my Mom died?" Dean frowns at the interior of the closet as he speaks, looking for the spray bottle of bathroom cleaner. "I guess. I don't really think about it a lot."He shifts awkwardly. "Shouldn't you be in class?"_

"_Study period." Castiel shrugs, looking a little saddened. "If you don't want to talk about it..."_

"_It's not that I don't...it's just..." Dean closes the closet door with a sigh. "Come on." _

_He leads Castiel down the corridor, through a door marked 'Strictly No Admittance To Students' and into the boiler room, a stuffy, dusty space with some older chairs and a block of lockers stored in a corner. Dean disentangles two chairs and sets them on the concrete floor. Gesturing for Castiel to sit down, then following suit. _

"_I don't talk about it, because it wasn't really any different." Dean starts. "My dad didn't just turn into an alcoholic the second my mom died...he was already pretty far gone." He looks at Castiel, who's patiently waiting for him to continue. No one has ever asked to hear about John before, all the casual, couple of week guys he's had around tended to ignore the existence of John and Sam altogether. _

"_My dad was always a drinker...and he was in the army, so he wasn't around when I was really little. But then he came home, and he was drinking, a lot – all the time. By mom wasn't happy about it, but he...I remember him always promising that he'd stop, that he was cutting back. Then, when I was eight, my mom got pregnant with Sam." He remembers that, his mom telling him he was going to have a baby brother – he had not been thrilled with the idea, not until he'd seen that wrinkled pink little thing crying like a cat. So small and defenceless. After that he'd known that he'd have to look out for Sam – there was no way something that squishy could survive on its own. _

"_So, a month or so after they brought Sammy home from the hospital, my Dad disappeared. He'd done it before, so I wasn't worried. But after a while my Mom told me that Dad hadn't just gone – His friends Bobby and Pastor Jim – old family friends, they'd taken him away. So he'd stop drinking." Dean picks at his fingers, fraying the skin around the nails. "When he came back, he was better for a while...he'd stopped drinking, he played with me, not so much with Sam because he was too small. But he was a good dad." He can see the slight concern in Castiel's eyes, knows that he's waiting for the part of the story when it all comes crashing down._

"_One night, I guess he'd had enough of being sober. Maybe it was hard, because of the army or...he and mom had had a fight...but he went out, got drunk and came home." Dean pauses, remembering that he'd gone to bed that night, under his cloud duvet, listening to his Mom sing to Sam in the next room over. _

_He'd gone to sleep before she'd come to say goodnight._

"_He was smoking. Drunk, and smoking." Dean digs his nails into his hand. "And it started a fire. My mom, she got trapped up in the bedroom, Dad stumbled out onto the lawn...and I woke up, and Sam was crying...there was a lot of smoke and...and I just grabbed him and ran. Climbed out of my window, down a tree." He remembers the fire coming up the stairs, the sheer terror of that moment. "I was holding Sam, he was screaming so loud, and all these people were coming out of their homes in their pyjamas to look at the house...my Dad was throwing up in the front yard."_

_Dean feels Castiel's hand touch his, stopping him from digging his nails into his own skin._

"_You've never told anyone that, have you." Castiel says quietly. _

_Dean shakes his head, unable to say anything else, now that it's all out – like poison lanced from under his skin._

_Castiel leans forward and wraps his arms around Dean, holding him close. Dean's surprised by the feeling of the smaller body against his – in his mind he's back at nine years old, small and holding the squalling bundle in his arms, trying to get his Dad alert enough to tell him what to do. _

_The bell for the end of school goes, and Dean has no idea how long they've been sitting like that, Castiel's arms around him, holding on tightly as if Dean's in danger of falling. _

"_I should get back to work." Dean whispers. _

_Castiel releases him reluctantly. _

"_Are you coming to see me tonight?" he asks._

_Dean nods. "Just try and stop me."_

_With Castiel gone, Dean returns to work, finishing up in a raw, somewhat odd emotional state. He's never told anyone about that night, about what he remembers of his childhood. Now he has, and it was Castiel. As much as he tells the teenager that he loves him, it was never proven until now – now he knows. He never would have told him that otherwise._

_It's because of this new feeling, like he's lost an outer skin of stone, that he's ill-equipped to find what he does on returning home. _

_John is lying outside the apartment, blood soaking through the back of his shirt._

_Sam freezes beside him, and Dean touches his shoulder earnestly. _

"_Go inside, hot water – peroxide under the sink."Sam still doesn't move. "He's going to be ok, Sam. It's fine."_

_Though he's a little shaken himself. John has turned up like this before, he gets into fights, or falls down, or gets beaten up by people he owes money to. Dean lifts him carefully and hauls John inside, taking him through to his bedroom. He lays him face down on the bed, pushes his shirt up. There's blood all over him, coming from a ragged wound in his back, long but not as deep as Dean had feared. _

"_What happened?" he asks, not really expecting a response, and he doesn't get one. John just grunts irritably, flat out on the bed. Dean sighs, accepts the water and disinfectant when Sam brings it to him. He sends his brother out into the living room to make his own dinner and do his homework. _

"_This is going to sting." Dean mutters, setting to the crusted blood with barely a pause, listening to John growl at the smarting of the peroxide. The chore is a familiar one and he has little patience with it – it's hard to nurse someone effectively when they care so little for you. _

"_You realise I have better things to do..." Dean mutters. "Then clean up your messes...I could have had better things to do."_

_John remains either insensible or stolidly silent. _

"_A year or so, and Sam's going to go to college – and he will go, because..." Dean sighs. "I'm not paying for your damn treatment, again. Three times Dad...I'm sick of wasting it all on you." He feels guilty, but of the three of them, Sam is the one with the future, he's the one that deserves the best chances. He continues to clean the blood from his father wondering what he's going to do with his own life. "I know you think that I'm just like you...but, I'm not. I'm found someone, and ok, maybe it's not you and mom – storybook perfect...but it's not going to end in the perfect disaster either...it's real, and I'm not going to give it up. Not for you."_

_John gives no sign of caring, Dean steels himself and starts to clean the long wound. His father barely stirs, just groans in pain and buries his face in the sheets. _

_With most of the blood gone, and the water in the bowl turning pink, Dean's about ready to stop working for the day. He's been cleaning up other peoples messes since he woke up, and now he'd really like to eat dinner with Sam, then go and see Castiel for a few hours. _

_His Dad hisses as Dean cleanses the top end of the wound, swabbing the blood away. Dean's hand stops, and John shifts in pain as the stinging compress is not withdrawn. _

_Under his fingers, bisected by the ugly gash, is a devil tattoo. _


	16. Chapter 16

You can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter and tumblr – and there's a link to my novel in my profile.

_He can't bring himself to touch John after that, Dean leaves the room, goes through his mother's contact book, still kept in the kitchen despite the fact they don't own a phone. Right there, under J is Pastor Jim's phone number._

_He has to know, right now._

_Outside is a payphone, and he goes to it, the number written on his hand._

_He calls Pastor Jim, and asks for the name of the rehab place they sent John to just after Sam was born._

"_Is something wrong?" _

"_No, I just...wanted to know – we...uh...we might be trying again, I've saved up some money for it." Dean lies smoothly._

"_Dean..." Jim sighs. "You know I care about your father but...keep your money – I don't think it's worth you going without."_

"_I'll...think about it." Dean says vaguely. "Can I have the contact number though? Just in case."_

_Pastor Jim sighs. "Place in Detroit, called...Mercy House, the number is..."_

_Dean writes it on his palm._

"_Thanks." _

"_Dean, I know he'd your Dad but...Sam's your brother, and you're important too...remember that."_

"_I will." Dean manages around the guilty lump in his throat. How can he begin to even internalise the idea that he'd sodomised his baby brother? How can...Dean shakes his head, trying to clear it, stopping the pained flare of tears at the corner of his eyes. He can't think about it, not until he knows, for sure._

_He hangs up the phone, expels his change and then dials Mercy House. A cheerful woman comes on the line and Dean explains that he's trying to track down a woman his father knew years ago, an old friend._

_The lies come easily now. _

"_John Winchester?..let me think..."_

"_He was in for alcoholism, around seventeen years ago." Dean explains. "I think she was a heroin addict."_

"_You mean Rachel Garrison? She was here about...God, seventeen years ago, I'd only just started here. But I remember her, such a sweet girl." She rustles some paperwork. "Hmm...he was in around the same time, I suppose they met at group – we're all inclusive with some of the sessions...if I remember rightly they were kind of..." She makes a vague noise. "Well, we don't encourage relationships in the programme, but they were close."_

_And Dean's heart falls into his stomach, bathed in acid like paint stripper. _

_He goes into the apartment, leaving the payphone outside one pane of glass short, his foot aching from the kick to it. The living room is dark, Sam asleep on the couch. It's late, so late and Dean finds his way to the far bedroom in the dark, looking in at his father, sleeping face down on the mattress. _

_He's not prepared for the anger, the rage that boils in his acid churning gut, for all the nausea and shock and pain to sharpen to a single, dangerous point. Like a knife appearing in his hand. _

_Dean's over at the bed before he consciously decides to go, his fingers curl in his Father's shirt, turning him and hauling him up. The drunken man takes long moment to wake, long enough for Dean to lean in, close enough to smell the stale alcohol seeping from his pores, and hiss._

"_You, ruined, everything." _

_He drops John back onto the mattress, and as his eyes blink open slowly, unfocused and reddened, Dean's fist pulls back and lashes out, throwing John's head sideways. It feels so good, in that bad, guiltily gratifying way, that he does it again, and again, and again. Then Sam's yanking on his arm, sobs between his words as he shouts,_

"_Dean stop! Stop it! Please..." _

_Pulling him back from John, whose face is a bloody mess, streaming dark red from his nose, flesh split open like a rotten fruit. Dean's hand aches, burns with the bruises that will form by morning, his teeth throb from gritting them, chest too tight from holding back even now, everything he wants to do._

_In that moment the dam in Dean's mind, the thing that's been holding him together since he was a kid, breaks open. _

_All the terrible knowledge pours home, that John was a drunk, that he'd had to be chased into rehab by his friends. And he'd come back, failed himself, his family. Burnt his house to the ground with his wife trapped inside – and completely forgotten his part in it. Then he'd drank some more, stolen Dean's childhood and sent it sluicing down the drain. He'd made Dean look after himself, Sam, his own father – showing more resentment than gratitude for his son's efforts._

_Now the one thing. The one person, Dean had found on his own. The one thing he had, that he'd thought free of his father's influence...and it had been there all along. John Winchester's grubby finger prints all over Castiel like a rash – a plague passed on from generation to generation._

_John had bred Dean with his stubbornness, his sense of perverted duty. Sam had received all the cockeyed hopefulness, all the good the old bastard had to give. And Castiel, their lost brother, born to be an addict, but more than that, born to feel as worthless as his father before him. _

_Dean thinks of the things he's done with Castiel, his mouth on Cas's cock, their bodies joined together, Cas sucking him to hardness._

_But worse, far worse, is the memory of Castiel's face as they'd made love, open, hopeful and so, so innocent, that it had almost broken him then._

_And now..._

_Sam shoves Dean out into the living room, tears weaving their way down his face._

"_Stay away from him." Sam says shakily, his face hectic with tears and anger. _

"_Sam..." Dean's voice comes out strained, he thinks he might have been yelling at John as he rained down blows, he doesn't remember. _

"_No...just...stay here." Sam quakes with fear and it's the first time Dean's seen Sam be afraid of him. He sinks down onto the couch, still warm from Sam's sleeping body, and as with his anger, something just snaps._

_And he can't stop crying._

_Sam is frozen between his father's bedroom and his brother, who's crumpled into tears too fast to process. Finally, the younger boy grabs a tea towel and some ice, goes into the bedroom to see to John, who's still half comatose anyway with drink. He dumps bloodied tissues into the trash and leaves the ice for his father. _

_Back in front of Dean he pauses, blood on his too small pyjama shirt. His hands are still shaking._

"_Dean...what hell is going on?" Sam touches his shoulder. "Dean, please...what it is? What happened?"_

_Dean can't, it's too much. Everything, since he was eight years old, is crawling through him, trying to find a way out. All the grief, the anger, the pain – all the wasted time, the opportunities swallowed up by his father, by the rotten root of his family._

_And Castiel._

_God, Castiel._

_And it hurts so much, so fucking much, that he can barely breathe. _

_Sam puts his hands on Dean's shoulders, trying not to feel hurt by the way his brother flinches. He's never seen Dean fall apart like this, as long as he can remember Dean has been the stable one, solid and predictable. _

"_Dean, you're scaring me..."_

_Dean shakes his head, folding in on himself until his head is bent low, the back of his neck meeting Sam's panicked eyes. He wraps his arms around his big brother, trying to physically hold him together, but again Dean flinches, and Sam can feel tears breaking out in his own eyes .His whole life it's been him and Dean together, coping with whatever came their way. Now he's all alone, and he has no idea what to do._

_Sam gets off the couch, kicks his feet into his sneakers and finds his jacket, change jingles in his pocket. More than anything, right now he needs help, and there's only one person he can think of who might be able to help Dean right now._


	17. Chapter 17

You can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter and tumblr – and there's a link to my novel in my profile.

Castiel answers the phone warily, his Father is washing the dishes from dinner, and Dean was meant to have come and gone hours ago. He'd assumed something had come up with Sam, so the call was unexpected.

"Hello?"

"Castiel, thank..." Sam's voice trails off, buffeted by static. "I need you to come to our apartment..."

"Is something wrong?" Castiel asks, a bite of fear in his voice. Out in the kitchen Michael lowers the dish he was holding into the water, he listens carefully.

"Dean's...he beat my Dad up and now...he won't stop crying and I don't know what to do." Sam's voice carries a whine of hysteria, because for all he's used to John hitting him, or living out of the car – he can't deal with the maelstrom of tears in the living room of the apartment.

"I'll be there soon." Castiel promises.

"Thank you." Sam sighs.

"Sam...it's ok if you want to wait outside until I get there." Castiel tells him.

"Just, hurry, please?" Sam asks.

"I will." Castiel replaces the phone and looks up to find Michael in the doorway, drying his hands on a dish towel. "I have to..."

"I heard." Michael says resignedly. "Be careful, I'll leave a key under the mat for you."

Castiel feels a surge of gratitude, impulsively he crosses the hall and hugs the man he'd always known as 'father' and had believed to be just that. Michael pauses for a second, before wrapping his arms around the teenager, squeezing him gently.

"You're a good boy Castiel." He touches his hair softly. "I hope he makes you happy."

"He does." Castiel assures him in a whisper, hearing Michael's heart drum under his cheek.

Castiel makes short work of the walk to Dean and Sam's apartment, his canvas jacket barely keeps out the cold and he wonders when he'll have the time and inclination to buy new clothes. Clothes who's only intention was to keep him warm and comfortable, as opposed to showing off as much skin as possible. He rolls his sleeve up a little as he walks, looking at the snake tattoo on his wrist. The piercing is gone from his navel, slowly healing now, but his tattoos will remain, a legacy to this past year.

And what an awful year it's been.

Castiel reaches the apartment in good time, climbs the stairs in his light soled canvas sneakers and almost smacks right into Sam, who's standing awkwardly at the top of the steps in his pyjamas and a jacket.

"Sam..."

"Sorry for dragging you out here." Sam says, with an odd smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "It's...it was nothing, it's settled now anyway."

"Ok..." Castiel hovers hesitantly. Sam's demeanour leaves him in little doubt that the other teenager wants him to back off and leave, but Castiel doesn't understand why. "Is Dean still here?"

"Yeah." Sam admits. "But...he was pretty wiped, I think he just needs to sleep."

Castiel looks at Sam's expectant, anxious face.

"You're a terrible liar, you know that?"

Sam flinches, backing up to the front door protectively.

"He doesn't want to see me." Castiel says, growing awareness sending a cold fluid to gather in his gut. Sam wouldn't lie to him unless Dean gave him a reason to, of this Castiel is certain.

"Dean...has some stuff to...it's not you..."Sam can't even look at him.

"You're breaking up with me, for him?" Castiel's spine is chilled by another swipe of wind.

"I'm really sorry." Sam looks like he's expecting Castiel to hit him, or at least yell.

"You shouldn't be." Castiel manages to say, right before Cas comes shuddering from sleep, raises their collective voice and shouts at the closed, flimsy door. "It's your fucking prick of a brother who should be sorry!"

Sam winces, shrinking against the door in mortification.

Cas is down the steps in three bounds, off across the parking lot and into the night, the wind whipping into his face, scourging through his thin jacket and vest to attack the skin underneath. He can't feel his face, save for the tear tracks that run like fire over his frozen skin.

Cas chimes over and over again, and Castiel shrinks away like a guttering candle flame.

He was a liar. A goddamn...

"Fucking liar!" Cas shouts.

Just like everybody else.

He walks with no direction in mind, unable to feel anything beside the wet cotton in his head and the sourness of his organs. Everything, everything, is gone. Fucking...He punches a passing wall with all the strength in his arm. His skin is like frozen rubber, the bones underneath throbbing painfully.

He stalks onwards, until he can't keep fighting the powerful, overriding urge to just curl up and die like an old leaf. He stumbles into the wall of a bar, catching himself on his damaged hand and his good palm. He slides down to sit on a pile of old, damp bricks beside a dumpster. The red light for 'Open Late' flashes on and off over him, somewhere down the alley a mutt scuffles in the garbage. He tips his head back against the wall.

The sobs feel like he's been smoking ninety a day, his lungs scrubbed out and raw, poisoned. He can't breathe and his throat is raw and he has never been sad enough and sober enough to feel this pathetic.

All he can think is that, an hour ago, maybe two – he had been on his way to see Dean. Dean who needed his help and who _wanted _his help.

Now no one wants him. Now Dean doesn't even care enough to tell him that to his face.

"I told you so." He spits bitterly.

Castiel does not reply.

_Sam closes the door, feeling cold and sick to his stomach. Castiel's voice had been an open wound, ragged and painful._

"_I did it." Sam says blankly, throwing off his jacket like its contaminated and sitting next to Dean on the couch. "I did exactly what you wanted."_

"_I heard." Dean takes a swallow from the whisky bottle. He'd found it at the back of the laundry hamper. Least John was good for something. Another tear falls down his face, at least they're coming slower now._

"_So why did I just do that?" Sam asks, almost on the verge of tears himself. "Tell me why I had to do that to him."_

_Dean takes another swallow. Shakes his head. "I Can't."_

"_No...you can't just..." Sam clenches his hands into fists. "I'm seventeen...you can't keep all this stuff from me...you can't put it all on yourself."_

"_I'm not." Dean closes his eyes, swipes a hand over his brow. "This is mine, ok? This is something I did and...and it's, just, on me, ok? I can't tell you."_

"_Dean...whatever it is, is killing you – an hour ago I thought you were just going to snap, that you were never coming back." Sam touches his shoulder gently. "Please, tell me."_

"_No."_

"_Dean..."_

"_Sammy..." Dean looks at him, and there's such panic in his eyes that Sam holds his tongue. "I can't tell you, because...you will never look at me the same way, ever again. And I can't take you hating me, ok? Not on top of..." He chokes on his sorrow as if it's still trying to crawl out of his mouth. "Not with everything else."_

_Sam clutches Dean's shoulder. _

"_Dean, you have done, everything for me. Given, everything. I could never hate you...and I'm not going to watch you destroy yourself over this." He sniffs wetly. "Please don't leave it like this...God, please don't let me think you'd just do that to someone that loved you..."_

_Dean can't hold up to Sam's cracked voice, the care and soft worry in it. He drops the bottle, hearing it thunk on the carpet, leans back against the musty couch cushion. _

"_I..." He gathers himself and starts over. "John...was at rehab with Cas's mom, right after you were born." He says dully. "John is Cas's father."_

_Sam freezes, a sick feeling bubbling in the pit of his stomach._

"_So that's it. That's what you wanted to know." Dean blinks and two matching drops of water fall down his face. "I've been fucking our brother."_

_At Sam's silence, the sickened look on his face, Dean feels the tears start to come faster, a kind of panic seizing his heart and almost stopping it dead._

"_I didn't know." He shakes his head, tries to look Sam in the eye and can't. "I swear, I didn't know." He takes a long, strangled breath. "And now...now I do and I can't even...I don't think I can see him without it hurting, worse than this...and if he ever finds out..." he can't even think about what that would mean. "And I'm the one that did that to him...I did this...but I didn't know, I swear to God, Sammy I didn't."_

_Sam grips Dean tightly, holding onto him as his brother loses his grip on his tangled emotions again. He presses Dean hard against his chest, holding him as tightly as he can._

"_It's ok." He shushes, as Dean had done when Sam had cried himself to sleep in dank motel rooms. "It'll be ok, I promise." _

_Then as now, the phrase is just that – a chain of words without hope, without any power to change the way things were._

_Dean shakes his head against his brother's shoulder, knowing the lie for what it is. _

"_Please..." and his hand clutches tight on the back of Sam's shirt, but the younger boy doesn't flinch. "Sam, please don't forgive me...I'm not...I don't..."_

_Sam shushes, holds onto him tighter, trying the fight the fear that the instant he lets go, Dean will fall into pieces._


	18. Chapter 18

Ok, straight up – if you're reading this with the expectation that the incest is going to be a big misunderstanding... You may want to work your way quietly towards an exit. For those of you worried by the epic levels of crying and pain – well, it will get better, eventually. But this is kind of the bombshell of the century – and I can't just hurry them through it, it wouldn't feel right.

_Dean wakes up feeling like hell. He stumbles from his room and into the bathroom, retches over the toilet and leans for a while with his forehead against the cool ceramic of the cistern. He promises himself right then that he will never drink again. He doesn't want to become his father, drinking to forget the pain he's felt, the memories of what he's done. _

_He doesn't want to live with them either._

_Looking into the mirror he sees only a dark eyed, pale face that looks nothing like him. He looks ten years too old and his eyes have red rims, puffy with dark circles. _

_He washes his mouth out, gets dressed and shakes Sam awake gently._

"_Time for school." He mutters, and he can't make his voice sound right. It's a dead voice, cold and low. _

_Sam goes warily to the kitchen counter and starts making breakfast for the two of them. Normally, Dean would shoo him away and do it himself, but right now he's having trouble even being upright and dressed. He feels made of lead, already exhausted. _

"_John went out this morning." Sam tells him quietly. "Really early."_

_Dean can't find the energy to reply. He sits down on Sam's unmade pull out bed. Sam comes to his side with a cup of coffee and a plate of toast with grape jelly. Dean eats mechanically, tasting only a wet mulch of cardboard, the coffee is like watered ashes, bitter and burnt tasting. _

_Sam is watches him carefully._

"_I'm fine Sam." Dean manages, toast sticking to his throat and the dead voice spilling out of him like needles hacked up in a horror flick. _

"_Are you sure you should work today?" Sam hedges. "Maybe...you should take a few days off? Until you get..."_

"_I'm not sick Sam." Dean hears himself drone. "I'm not going to get better." He sets aside his plate and mug, feeling his muscles complain tiredly at the thought of getting up and going to work. "Besides, we need the money."_

_He goes to put his boots on, one after the other, laces tied. Then his jacket goes on. _

"_We could move." Sam says quietly._

"_Where to?" Dean asks tiredly. _

"_Just away." Sam swallows and presses his lips together nervously. "Then you wouldn't have to think about it."_

"_I'd remember just fine." Dean picks up his keys, dropping them like a chunk of rock into his pocket. "Can we go, please?"_

_They walk to the school, and Dean feels smaller than he was before. Perhaps because he isn't walking tall, he's hunched in on himself, scuffing along on the pavement. Sam doesn't talk the whole way, and Dean is tense, waiting for the next words out of his younger brother's mouth, waiting for the other foot to fall – the condemnation and disgust._

_At the school gates Sam pauses, squeezes Dean's hand like it's his first day at school and bumps his forehead against Dean's shoulder._

"_It'll be ok."_

_Dean keeps his teeth set against the impulse to crumple again, nods jerkily and lets himself into work. _

_He cleans even though he feels like curling up in the boiler room. Never has he wanted to be taken care of more, and he finds himself missing his mom more in those hours than he has since he was ten years old and trying to take care of Sam. _

_The constant remembrance of Castiel is driving him insane. Like watching a recording of an eye being pierced with a needle, it makes him jerk each time he thinks of it. Each remembered gesture, the way Castiel clasped at him with all his limbs as he tumbled into ecstasy, the way the teenager had smelt, the way he'd hugged him for returning his mother's cross, the way their bodies had fit together in Castiel's bed, how he'd looking lonely and small in his hospital bed. Each memory a fresh spasm of anguish that makes Dean polish harder, scrub with greater ferocity at the renewed graffiti, until he realises that he can't even see the curses scrawled on the cubicle wall anymore, his eyes blurring with tears. _

_He grits his teeth, clears his eyes, and applies his brush to the word 'Cock' written in huge black letters on the white tile._

_Maybe Sam was right, maybe moving would be easier. They hadn't exactly been in town long, and they'd moved fast before. John wouldn't care, Sam would take it in stride, it had been his idea after all. Yet something in Dean rebels at that. He isn't one to run, his role, for as long as he can remember, has been to tolerate, to deal with the problems before him. _

_So he scrubs, feeling his heavy, exhaustedly numb body grow even heavier as he tries to forget everything._

_The door to the bathroom bangs, and Dean winces at the sound. The cubicle nearest the entrance opens and after few seconds Dean hears a little metallic 'snick' and the scent of smoke, first clean and then layered with the unmistakeable stench of weed, comes curling through the air. _

_And he knows, even before he goes to look, exactly what he will find. _

_Dean shoves open the cubicle door, Castiel is sitting cross-legged on the closed toilet seat, hugging himself small and protectively, and holding a joint in one hand. One of his eyes is eclipsed by a huge, dark bruise, his lip busted open. His clear eye narrows in anger, one booted foot kicking out against the door, trying to slam it closed._

"_Fuck off." He snaps._

_Dean holds the door open._

"_What happened to your eye?" He asks, because in the face of Castiel himself, there's a confusing rush of protectiveness, only exacerbated by the knowledge that Castiel is his kin. The revelation bites both ways – forcing Dean away from the brother he'd violated, and at the same time charging him with that boy's protection. _

"_Like you give a shit." Castiel's anger is sharp and vicious, cutting them both, a double edged shard. Dean realises that for all Castiel had hated himself before, now he hated everything, especially Dean, and that made him all the more lonely, all the more trapped._

"_I care." Dean clenches his fingers on the door frame. "Who did that to you?"_

"_Some asshole." Castiel looks at the floor, mouth down turned. The joint smoulders, forgotten in his hand. _

"_Does it hurt?" Dean asks, almost leaning in to take Castiel's head in his hands, as he would Sam – catching himself just in time. _

"_Like a bitch, thanks for asking." Castiel glares at him, the half teary glare of a much younger boy in the grip of miserable anger. "Now, like I said – Fuck off." He takes a terse puff on his joint, curling up on the toilet seat._

"_Castiel...I never wanted you to get hurt."_

"_Last night, or in general?" Castiel asks, a struggle for control evident on his features. He's voiced Dean's thoughts with such accuracy that for a second the older man is struck dumb. Then he recovers._

"_Both." He feels cold, sick, as if he's seconds from throwing up or passing out. "I didn't want this to end up like this...I didn't want to make you feel this terrible."_

"_You lied to me." Cas spits. "You lied right to my face – you son of a bitch."_

_Dean feel the terrible irony strike him in his chest. How can he do anything but lie, when honesty would kill the boy in front of him?_

"_I never lied to you."_

_Castiel huffs bitterly to himself. "You told me you loved me – remember that." His face scrunches up in disgust and indignation. "If you were just going to fuck me, and walk away, why do that to me? Why make me think you were different?"_

"_That's not what this is." Dean can't help but be torn apart by the forces inside of him, one part of him wants to tell Castiel the truth, to show him that at least he was loved, is loved. But the rest of him knows that that would destroy him, and more than that, Dean knows that things cannot ever be ok between them again. Even being this near Castiel is painful, the memories and what he knows, and the teenager's agonised plea for some kind of explanation - he can't bring everything together, can barely think._

"_You're so full of crap." Castiel mutters. _

"_No, I'm not." Dean swallows and tries to come up with the words to make this better, in some small way. "You think I enjoy seeing you like this? Knowing it's my fault?"_

"_I think you've already had your fun." Castiel glowers. "Screw what happens next."_

"_I love you." Dean says fiercely. "I love you so much I can't fucking stand it, alright? And if there was any way to be with you, I swear I'd take it. But there isn't, and I can't." He sighs. "The whole reason things happened the way they did, last night, is because I was so messed up, knowing that this..." he gestures between them. "Could wind up hurting you – that I couldn't stand to tell you to your face." It's all half truths, but he means them._

_Castiel still looks unconvinced._

"_Cas, I was a fucking wreck, I couldn't even keep it together for Sam. And I know this makes no sense to you, ok? I get it. But being with you...it's wrong." Dean feels the awful wrongness of it like a physical pang. "So wrong, and it can't happen. I'm sorry."_

_Castiel doesn't respond._

"_Christ, please say something...I know last night was hard, but..."_

"_Last night almost killed me." Castiel whispers._

_Dean freezes._

"_You sent me away." Castiel looks up at him, his eyes defiantly furious, but a bead of water falls from one of them, laces its way down his face. "You sent me away when I thought you wanted me there...and you didn't even tell me to my face...you have no idea, no idea...how much that hurt – how much it, still, hurts." Another tear joins its fellow. "And you won't even tell me why...and I sat out in the dark most of the night because...no one fucking wants me – not even Michael, not if he knew. So I didn't have anyone to go to...and then Brian..." he stops short._

"_Brian what?" Dean asks softly._

"_Nothing." Castiel says dully. _

"_Castiel..."_

"_He was at this bar, alright? That I was sitting by." Castiel shifts, touching one hand to his ribs as if they've pained him suddenly. "He had friends with him." He mutters._

"_What did they do?"_

"_Kicked the shit out of me – what do you think?" Castiel shakes his head. "The whole time I hoped they'd kick just a little too hard...I'd have been pretty fucking happy if I hadn't lived to see today."_

"_Don't." Dean growls. "Don't you dare say that."_

"_Why, does it hurt to hear it?" Castiel says pointedly. "Imagine someone you love as much as I love you, getting someone else to send you away – that hurts." He shakes his head. "None of them, not even Brian, could hurt me like this...they didn't love me enough."_

"_You'll find someone else." Dean tells him quietly. "Someone...far better than me."_

"_I don't ever want to love anything again." Castiel murmurs. "Everyone who made me love them just tore it out of me and left me behind." He looks up at Dean. "And you won't even tell me why."_

"_I can't..." Dean can't even look him in the eye._

"_What's wrong with me?" Castiel asks sharply, pleading evident in his voice. "Please just tell me." Dean shakes his head. " Please..." Castiel sniffs, breath catching as more tears fall. "What is it about me that is so bad that no one can bare to be around me?" And then he crumples, eyes closing and body bowing as if in pain._

_Dean moves without thinking, hands touching Castiel's bare shoulders, dropping to crouch in front of him, moving closer as his heart thumps, telling him to comfort Castiel, even as his skin prickles at the wrongness of the contact._

"_Cas...I promise..." But he can't say everything is going to be ok, even that simple lie is lost to him. "I promise..."_

_Castiel looks up, and before Dean can draw another breath they're kissing, Castiel's hands touching his face, tears brushing off onto his skin. _

_It's the best and worst thing he has ever felt, like he's been dying of thirst and offered a refreshing draft of poison. _

_Dean breaks the kiss desperately, but Castiel keeps him close, whispering, "Dean...whatever it is...I don't care...just please don't leave me."_

_Dean smothers the sob that catches his throat, in the top of Castiel's head. _

"_Please..." Castiel begs. "Please just stay."_

_When Dean pulls away Castiel's body jerks with the force of his misery, body scrunching up and shoulders trembling with suppressed sobs. _

"_Cas...I'm sorr-"_

"_Get out." Castiel murmurs. _

_Dean pauses._

"_Get out!" Castiel shouts. "If you're going...just...fucking...go." _

_And God help him – Dean does. _


	19. Chapter 19

Fear not, I have not abandoned the Cas point of view – but this part kind of needed to be Dean as well.

_While Sam scrawls away at his homework inside, Dean sits just outside of their door on a rusty lawn chair, a can of soda at his feet and an unread, water damaged paperback at his feet. The book had been a peace offering from Sam, taken out of the school library to keep Dean distracted in the absence of anything else at the apartment. It's a Vonnegut, and Dean's glad of Sam's caring impulse, but reading right now is a little beyond him._

_It's like Castiel's torn and tearful face is tattooed on the surface of his irises, a permanent image seared by the force of the teenagers misery. _

_Instead of reading he tips his head back against the uncomfortable edge of the chair, closing his eyes and trying to rest after a day of hard work following a night in which he hadn't slept. All the exhaustion piles onto him like fathoms of cold, bitter, sea water. Soon he's dozing, just by virtue of being so utterly, bone tired. _

_So when a hand comes out of nowhere to grasp his shoulder, he jumps and almost folds himself into the rusty contraption he's sitting on. _

"_Mr Winchester." Michael Novak grips his shoulder with surprisingly hard fingers. "A word." _

_He barely waits for a response before pulling Dean from his chair and marching him over to the other end of the covered walkway, pushing Dean into the corner by the railing._

"_What did you do to my son?" Michael demands, voice the kind of tone you'd expect to hear thundering from a pulpit. _

"_Mr Novak..." Dean holds up his hands pleadingly. _

"_Explain." He says stonily._

"_I don't know how to make this better...I can't make this up to him."_

"_Then why did you end things with him?" Michael's eyes are sharp and clear, filled with parental indignation. _

"_I had to." Dean says roughly, and Michael looks at him, assessing him in one long look._

"_You believe that." He murmurs contemplatively. _

"_I really do." _

"_You've hurt him very deeply...my son, is at home, broken hearted and in as worse a depression as I have ever seen in him – because of you."_

_Dean dips his head, feeling both ashamed and trapped by the situation that has formed around him, that he has caused, and that has wrecked Castiel like an unwary ship._

"_And you're hurting to." Michael continues, quietly. "I can see it."_

"_I..." Dean starts and then falters, shaking his head. "I don't think I have any right to...not after seeing him."_

"_Then why are you doing this, to my son, to yourself?" Michael's grip on his arm softens, a comforting, reassuring touch on his elbow. "I realised, in that hospital room, that you loved my son. I don't think I was wrong." He looks at him beseechingly. "And I don't think you'd hurt him, without a...very, good reason." _

"_I have one." Dean looks at him steadily. "But I can't tell you...or anyone else, believe me, this is the least damage that I can cause." Dean takes in Michael's disbelieving look, decides to cut him off. "I know how this looks – but, I really do love him, and I don't think that I can be the one that does that to him – the one who completely breaks him."_

_Michael looks torn for a second, understanding warring with anger, with sadness and sympathy. He appears to grope for strength, then finally braces himself and asks,_

"_Is this, in any way connected with me, not being Castiel's birth father?" He asks haltingly._

_Dean freezes. _

"_You know?"_

_Michael sighs, his face a mask of pain. "Of course I do." He gestures hopelessly. "I'm not a fool, I knew Rachel was pregnant when we met. It didn't matter to me. I loved her." He looks at Dean steadily. "I knew I'd love her son like he was really mine."_

"_I'm sorry." Dean murmurs._

_Michael bows his head in acknowledgement. _

"_But you already knew? Castiel knows?" Michael asks._

"_Yeah...uh...your wife told him, before she died." Dean catches himself. "In the hospital...before she died."_

_Michael looks both appalled and saddened. _

"_She didn't think I knew. I had hoped that...if I kept it a secret, our relationship would not suffer." He shakes his head. "But this...this is why he's been acting as he has been? The drugs and the sex..." He breathes out shakily. "I never wanted him to know. I didn't want him to doubt me, doubt my love for him."_

"_He knows you love him." Dean assures the pastor. _

"_I chose him, to be my son." Michael murmurs. "Even now, when he has become everything I should be against – he is still my son. I can't stand to see him like this."_

_Dean feels another strong pang of guilt. "If I could fix it, I would." He promises._

"_But if it isn't about me and Rachel, then, what could you possibly be keeping from him?" Michael asks._

"_I can't tell you..."_

"_I could hardly think less of you – when I came here it was to confront the man who callously broke my son's heart, if you are protecting it from true destruction that is at least worthy...but I have to know from what." Michael catches Dean's eyes. "I want to know so that I can protect him, and...nothing you tell me will ever make me love him less."_

"_I don't think..."_

"_Don't doubt me." Michael says sharply. "If I can love my son when he is stoned out of his mind, when he allows men to use his body, and his emotions as play things – then I can love him no matter what." _

"_Do you really want to test that?" Dean asks, his desperation obvious. "Because if I could go back and never know this, I would." He knows that it's true the second he says it, and feels a bilious influx of shame. "I would." He repeats. _

_Michael looks at him sympathetically. _

"_I know this is hard for you, that it has...ruined, what it was you had with my son...but I need to know why this is happening."_

_Dean clenches his hands into fists. _

"_I don't ever want him to know." Dean _

"_You're going to carry this, all by yourself?" Michael looks at him with a mixture of pity and a strange kind of respect. "You really don't have to."_

"_I'm not by myself." Dean points out._

"_Sam?" Michael guesses. _

_Dean nods. _

_The older man sighs._

"_Dean, I know you aren't accustomed to having an..." He makes a frustrated noise. "I know you're an adult, but sometimes you need someone older, someone to rely on." Dean looks away, humiliated once again by John's inadequacies, by his own maladjustment. "If you tell me, I can try and help you. For Castiel's sake."_

_Dean looks at him, this man who would willingly take his own troubles on himself for the good of a son who wasn't his, and for Dean himself, a man who had done nothing to earn a favour from him. Against that true goodness, Dean felt dirty, shiftless and degenerate._

"_Please Dean." Michael asks. _

"_You're going to regret it." Dean shakes his head, looking out onto the dark parking lot and wishing he had the strength to hold up against Michael's honest plea. _

"_Castiel, and I..." He pauses, taking one last look at Michael's blissfully ignorant face. He was really about to do this, to destroy Castiel and his father's bond. Because no matter what the pastor said, he could never look that same at Castiel, once he knew what he'd done with his brother. "I can't...I'm sorry, it would be..."_

_Michael looks disappointed and frustrated in equal measure._

"_They're brother's."_

_The words cut through Dean like hot water through ice, reducing him to a fragile filigree once more. Michael looks first confused, though the words are plain, and then shocked, aghast. He looks disbelievingly at Dean._

"_You're...you're related?"_

"_Brother's that fuck." John mutters, hauling himself along the walkway behind them, smirking with unpleasant humour. "And I always thought it would be you and Sam – you boys being so keen on each other." _

_Dean feels a spike of murderous rage, and it is only Sam, slamming open the door of the apartment and hauling John awkwardly inside, that stops him from pushing past Michael and finishing the job he'd started on John before. The older man's face still bore the signs of the beating, and Dean didn't doubt that right now, he was capable of murder._

_The apartment door slams closed, and Dean really hopes that Sam is up to dealing with John in his drunken state._

"_Mr Novak...I'm so sorry." _

_It feels like all he does these days is apologise, and he knows it will never be enough, not to Sam, to Michael or to Casitel. _

"_At the hospital..." Michael still looks grey with shock under the fluorescent strips. "I thought there was something about you...both of you...it just seemed..." _

"_I honestly didn't know...I only just put it together, that my Dad was at rehab with...with your wife."_

"_I would never think you'd done it intentionally." Michael assures him, getting his familiar calm back with visible difficulty. "Now I understand, why you..." He shakes his head, sinking down onto a small bench placed outside one of the apartments. _

_Dean slowly moves to sit beside him._

"_You said, if you could erase this knowledge...you'd still be with my son?"_

_Dean winces, almost regretting his earlier words. _

"_I loved him, a lot." He says diplomatically. "But...I can't be with him now. I know that."_

"_You made him so happy." Michael says quietly. _

"_And now I'm making him miserable." Dean points out. _

_Michael looks out into the dark with the air of a man thinking deep and fast as a hidden spring. Calculating and careful._

"_Dean...Castiel loves you a great deal."_

_Dean stays silent, knowing that something else is coming. _

"_I think that he loves you enough to forgive anything, even that which was beyond your control."_

"_No!" Dean stands quickly, turning to face the older man, who looks up at him expectantly. _

"_You haven't heard me out."_

"_I don't have to." Dean says firmly, "You can't seriously believe that I can..."_

"_Would it make you happy?" Michael asks simply._

"_That's not..."_

"_Would it?"_

_Dean sighs with frustrating._

"_You're asking me...to knowingly, sleep with my brother."_

"_Don't think about sleeping with him." Michael waves the notion away. "Would being with him, make you as happy as it would make him?"_

_Dean thinks about this, and truthfully, the moments holding Castiel in the teen's bed had felt exactly the same as the moment in the toilet cubicle, where Castiel had held onto him so tightly. _

_When he hadn't wanted to walk away._

"_Yes." He says quietly._

"_Then...you have a choice to make." Michael tells him. "You can be with my son, or you can be apart from him."_

"_It's not that easy." Dean insists._

"_I'm making it that easy." Michael tells him. "Everything else you can work out, but being without you is killing my son...and it isn't doing anything but hurt you too."_

"_If I want to be with him, I'd have to tell him." Dean says stonily. "Otherwise...that's abusing him, I can't do that."_

"_Then tell him, tell him in the best way you possibly can – and I'll be there for him, and you can help him through it."_

"_That's crazy." Dean mutters, with no real conviction. _

"_No, marrying a pregnant addict was crazy." Michael tells him. "But Rachel made me...so very happy, even if she lied to me about our son. My life without her would have been incredibly different, and I am so happy I chose her...and I know it's not the same for you, that this is...so much harder, so much more complex..." He stands and looks Dean in the eye. "But...I chose him to be my son...and you...you can choose to have him as your partner, not your brother."_

_Dean hadn't expected to ever feel the same yearning for Castiel that he had felt before, but it overcomes him with such suddenness that he isn't prepared for it. _

_Michael's hug is as unexpected as it is strong, a heavy embrace and a clap on the back that makes his ribs shake. _

_It's the first time since he'd stayed at Bobby's, aged ten, that Dean had received a sober, fatherly hug from a man._

_And he won't deny that he needs it._

_Because things have somehow become so much harder._


	20. Chapter 20

Castiel lies still in the dark, the duvet lying over him, most of it bunched under his arm and along one edge of his body as he curls up against it on his side. The worn cotton is almost childishly comforting. He feels like something between a five year old and some kind of rodent – cushioned in its own nest of stolen fabric.

The curtains are not closed, and the night sky is blank of stars for the most part, smudged away by the light pollution of the streetlights. The house is silent, and Castiel wonders dimly where his father could have gone at such a late hour. Perhaps something at the church? The thought dies, listing without energy and sinking back into him. It hardly matters.

The immediate, sharp pain of Dean's betrayal has faded into a depression as dense as fog. It deadens all sound, all feeling, and nothing seems as important as staying right where he is – safe in the dark. The dull ache is a missing organ, a phantom limb – where Dean should be, on the bed beside him, there's nothing.

Castiel dozes, depression for the moment blocking out Cas's anger, his self loathing and bitterness.

Castiel has only hurt, and no spite or fury to nurse it with.

His bruises are healing, the split in his lip has knitted shut and he can speak without tearing it again. Though there's no one to talk to but Michael, and nothing he wants to say. Somehow Castiel knows that Michael is disappointed in him – whatever Castiel did to make Dean leave is the latest in a long line of his failures.

He's a cuckoo, a fraudulent child in a bed he doesn't deserve, cared for by a father that isn't his. Now he has failed even in finding another to take him in. Castiel knows this, and feels duly ashamed.

The front door opens, the chimes on the porch shiver, casting out tiny sounds as Michael enters the house. Castiel lies still and listens to the padding of the preacher's shoes on the carpet. Then the footfalls on the stairs. His door slides open silently and a long line of light slices through the dark.

"Castiel, are you awake?" Michael whispers.

For a moment Castiel considers feigning sleep. Real rest has alluded him so far, the last few days have been categorised by being awake during daylight, and being awake at night.

"Yes." He turns over, the bunched covers going with him in a softly rustling heap. His cotton pyjamas, unearthed for their comforting texture and washing powder scent, swish with the sheets.

"May I come in?" Michael asks.

Castiel sits up against the headboard, pulling the sheets with him. Michael comes in, sits on the edge of the bed like a curious bird.

"I'd like to talk to you about something."

"Yes, I am going to school tomorrow. Yes, I'll be fine." He looks up at him through his scruffy fringe. "No, I don't want to talk about it."

"Alright." Michael says. "This isn't about Dean in any case." He looks at Castiel, as if searching for something in his stubble covered, bruised face. Castiel doesn't know what.

Michael wonders how he could have missed it, realising almost at once that he had never looked. For who would? Who would look into their sweet son's face and pick out the sullen, dark features of the town drunk? Who would recognise those features? The harsh brow, expressive eye line and thick, dark hair – the roughness of one man transmuted into delicate beauty through the process of conception and birth with a mother as lovely as Rachel had been.

"This is about us." Michael tells him.

Castiel instantly feels uneasy.

"I know that things have been strained, things have been very hard for you since your mother died." Michael begins. "But...I want to make them better for you. I...I have always wanted the best for you. Especially now." He takes a deep breath. "It has never mattered to me, understand?" He says bluntly. "How you came to be here...it makes no difference to me."

Castiel feels a clench of misery, an old wound made fresh.

"You will always be my son." Michael tells him. He reaches out and gently smoothes Castiel's ruffled hair. "And I will always love you."

He's wanted to hear that for so long, never believing the occasion would come. Castiel shifts forward, Michael bends and the sheets are pawed out of the way, leaving Castiel with his hands around his father's middle, face buried in his shirt and Michael strokes his hair. Castiel inhales, snuffling, and finds the scent he remembers from his childhood – mint, chalk and church. The way his father always smelt.

"I didn't want you to know." Castiel says, voice muffled against his father's shirt.

"I know." Michael says quietly. "But you told Dean."

Castiel is quiet for a while.

"I think I've really lost him." He sniffs.

"He told you he loved you?" Michael asks softly.

Castiel nods against his father's chest. "And I believed him." He mutters dismally.

"So did I."

Castiel glances up in surprise.

"At the hospital, he told you while you were sleeping." Michael tells him. "And I still believe that he meant every word."

"He left me." Castiel murmurs.

"And I can't say why." Michael says, knowing that his words will be interpreted as ignorance and not complicity. "But he had a reason, and in believing that he loves you, I think we should both assume it was for the best...or at least what he thought was best."

"It doesn't hurt any less." Castiel mutters.

"Sometimes, the things we do for the best are mistakes, things we thought we should do, without thinking." Michael tells him gently. "I kept your mother's secret, and perhaps if I had told you...things would have been different." He touches Castiel's shoulder reassuringly. "But it will get better, eventually the right thing will come, maybe not the logical thing, the easiest – but the best thing."

"I just hate that he can make me feel like this."

"At least you feel for him." Michael wonders if Castiel would have still found Dean, even without his dive into sex and narcotics. Perhaps it would have begun differently, in shy looks and tentative approaches, Dean would have wavered longer, Michael is sure, in the face of such innocent. But rather than that slow approach, there had been a car crash. Now all that was left to him was to tend the wounded, imprinted with each other irreversibly and at speed.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through this by yourself." Michael says quietly. "But I'm here for you now, I promise." Michael prays silently that his son will mend rather than shatter under Dean's care. "No matter what happens." He murmurs.

Castiel finally falls asleep in his father's hold, and Michael lowers him back onto the bed and covers him over with the sheets, tucking him in as he'd done when Castiel was a child.

He is still a child. Michael knows this, Castiel will always be his child, his only son and the most wonderful thing he'd ever done with his life. No matter what, Castiel had always found a way to make him proud. Even in the depths of his despairing rampage through excess, he had still managed to stay the same mild boy at heart.

Now it came down to Dean.

Michael was loath to leave his son's welfare (and potentially his sanity) in the hands of another. But this was, he had to admit, beyond the limits of his business. He could help to restore Castiel, he could help both him and Dean to work through this hardship, but he could not tell Castiel the truth of his parentage.

Dean had claimed that responsibility, and Michael trusted him with it.

He only hoped that the other man chose to do the right thing, to stay with Castiel. Because for Michael it was plain to see that Castiel would not last without Dean. Both men were so broken, and in fixing each other they had exchanged vital pieces, becoming enmeshed, each dependant on the other for their survival. Separation would take its toll on both of them.

Michael prayed that it would end soon, for both their sakes.


	21. Chapter 21

_Dean comes in off of the walkway with a burgeoning tension headache and a heavy heart. Just a few days ago he'd been in this very room, his world broken down and everything he'd previously held to be true proved to be nothing but a deception, a cruel trick played by time and circumstance. Dean had shaken free of his own careful control, and in those awful house he had promised, promised himself and Sam that he would never, ever think of Castiel that way again._

_He had chosen to make it right, to leave Castiel well alone and continue with his life, carrying the knowledge for the both of them._

_Only...it had not proved so simple. _

_When Castiel had begged him to tell him why made him so unlovable, what made him so bad – Dean had felt a stab of concern, and of love – almost unbearably strong...and not in any way platonic. In that moment he would have gladly put his arms around Castiel, taken him out of the graffiti covered toilet cubicle and walked him home – not to Michaels house, but to his own squalid apartment, to wrap Castiel away on the single mattress of his own bed, and to crawl in beside him until neither of them felt the pull of despair that had so laden their exchange in that dank, institutional room. _

_Slowly Dean was becoming aware that, although his mind could grasp the wrongness of him and Castiel. The fact that they were half brothers, sharing the same blood from the same father...the rest of him could not quite become convinced of the taboo._

_He was awakening to this knowledge, subtler and as undeniable as that of Castiel's parentage. _

_He loved Castiel._

_Alongside that, deeply ingrained in him as surely as if the teenager had burnt through to Dean's bones with his ecstasy – he still wanted Castiel. Of course, each burst of want was shackled to shame and guilt, but all the same, as he'd spread out, sleepless, in his bed – he had missed the warm weight of the teenager next to him, missed his time lying in Castiel's bed, breathing in the scent of white soap and incense. His hands twitched whenever he remembered the smooth skin of Castiel's neck, his lips worried against each other at the thought of Castiel's soft mouth. Without Castiel's steady pulse where their chests met, Dean's heartbeat thudded on, lonely and without Castiel's ear there to catch the sound. _

_It confused Dean, drove him round and round in circles. He loved Castiel, missed him so strongly he could almost feel the place inside of him that had been hollowed out, and the thought of Castiel stuck in a depression somewhere else, believing himself to be unloved, was intolerable._

_But Castiel was his brother. _

_That thought did not marry well with the rest, and it had Dean panicking, stuck and maddened like a dog on a chain. _

_Sam looked up from his seat on the couch, homework forgotten on the table. On the stove a pan of noodles and chicken waited, covered in some kind of chilli and vegetable combination. Sam got up and dished Dean up a plate, treating him like he had a bad case of flu. But that was what Sam was like, treating hangovers, detox, heartbreak - all as a simple illness that could be cured with a little care, a blanket and some proper food. _

"_What did Mr Novak want?" Sam asks as Dean spools up noodles and puts them into his mouth. There's a pang of chilli flavour, which he's glad of – he'd almost gotten used to his food being tasteless. _

"_He wanted to know what I'd done to Cas." Dean murmurs, moving chunks of bright vegetables and meat around. _

"_You didn't do anything." Sam says automatically. _

"_I broke his heart Sam." Dean feels a stab of guilt. "I knew what I was doing and I didn't stop to think that he wouldn't know...he'd just...break."_

_Sam frowns down at his plate._

"_Is he mad? Castiel's dad?"_

"_He's..." Dean doesn't know what Michael is. He'd been worried about Castiel, angry at Dean, but also understanding. The news of Castiel's parentage had clearly been a blow, Michael had been shaken – but his quick mind had soon pieced together a solution – had worked out a way to make Castiel happy again._

_Dean just didn't know if it was right. What 'right' even meant for them. Was it right to be with Castiel now, knowing that they were related? Would it be right to leave town, leave Castiel behind, broken and miserable? What was 'right'? How could Dean possibly know, when he knew he was only good for passing through life, that he could be selfish and stupid and...and this decision was Castiel's whole future – how could he do this?_

"_He wants Castiel to get better - to not be sad anymore." Dean says simply. _

"_How is that going to work?" Sam asks. "What does he want you to do?"_

"_I don't know Sam, ok?" Dean feels a tight flare of sickening panic, he honestly doesn't know what to do, and questions aren't helping._

"_Ok, ok..." Sam raises a hand as if calming a spooked horse. "Just...what did he say?"_

"_He said..." He shakes his head. "I wasn't going to tell him, but after John...he knew, so I...I told him the rest."_

"_What did he think?" Sam asks, after a small silence. _

"_I don't know, I think he's taken it hard, but he's more worried about Cas than what it all means...I think he wants me to go back...to being with Castiel."_

_Sam blinks._

"_He wants you to...be with him...like...you were before?" _

"_Don't look at me like that – I didn't say I would."_

"_But you're thinking about it." Sam points out._

_Dean says nothing. _

"_Dean...he's our half brother."_

"_I know that." _

"_What you were like, after you found out...how can you even consider going back?"_

_Dean clenches his hands on his lap, plate abandoned on his knees. _

"_Because I...love him." _

_Sam remains silent._

"_Yeah, it's...beyond stupid, and insane and...wrong. But...I do, I loved him almost as soon as i met him and...I thought I could let him go, but I can't."_

_Sam gets up and walks away. Dean sits, shame and guilt curdling in his stomach. But Sam returns, a few pieces of printer paper in hand._

"_I looked it up at school." Sam says hesitantly. "There are...a few cases, more than I thought – where people met their separated brothers, sisters...or people whose parents used the same sperm donor...and their kids met." Sam shuffles the pages. "It's happened before, people with the same blood, they just...find a connection that they thought was..." He falters nervously. "...they thought they were in love."_

"_Maybe they were." Dean mutters. "I don't even know what it would feel like to love anyone else. This is it." He rubs the knuckles of one hand against the back of his head. "I don't know what it's supposed to feel like."_

"_Maybe...you'll find someone else, it'll feel different." Sam says hesitantly._

"_It's been a long time Sam, and I haven't wanted anyone, anyone specific, to stick around." He rubs his arm defensively. "Not that I couldn't have used someone to just...be there."_

"_That doesn't mean he's the only one."_

"_He's the only person, aside from you...aside from...Dad." He makes himself say it. "And Bobby, Jim...that I actually...love."_

"_You love Dad?" Sam murmurs. _

"_You don't do all this for someone you hate." Dean mutters. "I used to love him...now...I still do but...it's hard."_

"_Bobby and Pastor Jim are like family." Sam points out. "And Castiel..." he flushes slightly. "He is...family."_

_Dean looks down at the stained carpet. _

_Sam can't bring himself to tackle the point that, perhaps Dean is only capable of the fierce devotion that family justified. That real love, with someone new, a stranger, might be beyond him. Instead he changes the subject, at least a little._

"_Do you still love Dad, even a little, after what he did, telling Castiel's dad?"_

_Dean looks sadly at the patch of carpet by the door, scrubbed almost every morning, so much so that the dark colour has been eroded and bleached to a sickly pink, like old blood. He's done so much for John, patched him up, fed him, clothed him, given him money to pay off his debts, taking him top hospital, putting up, shelling out, talking down..._

"_No." Dean says, surprising himself._

_Sam nods sadly. "I don't either."_

"_Sammy, you don't..." Dean turns to his younger brother, wondering when Sam stopped being the cute kid who still bothered to make John cards for father's day. "You don't have to say that, just because of me."_

"_It is because of you." Sam counters, sadly. "I can't...love him, not after everything he's done to you."_

_All the slaps to the face Sam has endured, punches and cruel words. The money John has stolen from him, the belongings he's pawned. The time John managed to hurl all over Sam as he slept on the floor at their last place, the teachers meetings John missed (or worse – attended drunk) and every, single time that John had forgotten that Sam existed, raging at him as a stranger, an intruder after a heavy nights drinking. All of that, and it was John's behaviour towards Dean, the responsibility he'd heaped on him by default, that had pushed selfless, accepting Sam over the edge. _

_It's then that Dean makes a decision, a small one, given the much harder and more tangled resolutions he has yet to make, still, this decision is one he knows will change everything. _

_He stands up, putting the remainder of dinner aside. _

"_Dean?" Sam looks up at him questioningly. _

_Dean looks at his father's bedroom door, testing himself, working out if he really intends to do this. His mind offers no complaints, no pangs of guilt. This then, is something he has long since prepared himself for. _

_He gestures for Sam to follow him into the room where John lies sleeping. In whispers, Dean explains what he has a mind to do. _

_Sam offers no argument, like he can sense that this is the time to do this, this is what they have been waiting for, without even knowing it. _

_So it is that, when John shakes off the effects of a nights drinking and stumbles out into the living room, he is confronted by Dean, a suitcase, a small pile of neatly folded bills. Sam is gone, on his way to school. Dean has taken the day off to do this, to clean house, entirely. And Sam didn't want this memory, on top of all the rest._

_John glares at him sourly._

"_Going somewhere?" He grunts, eyes casting about for something to soothe his hangover, finding nothing, as usual. _

"_No." Dean lifts the handle on the wheeled case, a fifth hand thing that had belonged to Sam. "You are."_

_John meets his eyes, a challenge in their bleary depths. _

"_You're not sending me to rehab again." _

_Dean wheels the case to the door._

"_I won't go." John protests, louder. "You're problem, boy, is that you never know when to quit. Still trying to get back something that never was anyway – trying to fix..."_

"_I'm not sending you to rehab...Dad." Dean interrupts._

_John frowns at him. "So what the hell is this about?" _

"_You're leaving." Dean tells him, "Today."_

"_Now hold on a second." John spits. "This is my home, you're my goddamn son..."_

"_I pay for this place...and maybe without you, we won't be here much longer." Dean says firmly. "But you don't live here anymore – you're going to take your things, and go."_

"_You're going to throw me out on the street?" John narrows his eyes. "There's gratitude."_

"_For what?" Dean surprises them both by shouting. "For making me an orphan? Because that's what we are, me and Sam – you killed mom, accidently...but you did...and then you disappeared into a bottle. So what, what is it that I should be grateful for?"_

"_For the only person you ever loved." John spits sarcastically._

_Dean freezes._

"_Yeah, I heard your little speech before I went to sleep." John says victoriously. "Lying there, listening to you...made me sick as a dog."_

"_That'd be the whisky." Dean tells him blandly. _

"_I need it." John growls. "Who wouldn't with a son who hides money from me, won't even look me in the eye...and you, twenty-five and still working as a janitor – you're a joke. Fucking fag for a son, who wants that?" John thunders._

_Dean looks at him levelly._

"_Six."_

_John blinks, expected backlash not arriving. _

"_I'm twenty-six...you asshole." Dean's hand is white knuckled on the suitcase. "Suppose I should be glad you remember my name."_

"_Dean..." Johns anger falls into a pathetic plea so fast it almost makes Dean reconsider. He hardens his heart. Now or never – now is when he gets his and Sam's lives back._

"_Well done." He says pointedly. He brandishes the small bundle of notes. "Now you're going to take this...this is what I've been saving for rehab...most of it. Because Sammy...he's smarter than everyone, he's getting a scholarship or Hell'll freeze over. So this is for you." He opens the top pocket in the suitcase and stuffs the money in with shaking fingers. "So...take it, and drink yourself to death...or get better...it's on you now." _

_John looks at him, and for a second Dean thinks he can see a flash of shame in his beetle black eyes. _

"_If Bobby knew what you were..."_

"_He does, and Jim...and they think I should have done this years ago." Dean tells him. He steps away from the case, opens the door. _

"_This is your last chance...take it and get out." Dean says. _

_John stands for a moment, indecision clear. But he eyes flick to the case – more money than he's ever allowed, enough for weeks. He walks towards it like a mutt after a rotting animal. Takes the case by the handle and wheels it onwards, slowly. Dean watches him go out the door. _

"_Have a great life Dad." Dean mutters._

_And those are the last words he speaks to his father. _


	22. Chapter 22

Woo! An update. BTW, check out the link to my novel on my profile page, and my twitter at 'JollySnidge'.

_Sam comes home to find that a lot of changes have occurred in his absence. _

_The couch is gone for a start, replaced with a new one. Well, relatively speaking. It has a wood frame and brown upholstery, and it's pushed up against the wall with a new rubber plant next to it. The faded patch of much scrubbed carpet is covered over with a new rug, woven cream and red to match the carpet. There are three scented candles burning on the chipped coffee table, making the room smell like cheap vanilla, cinnamon and chocolate scent. The door to John's room is open, and as Sam looks around at the living room, Dean comes out, a cloth and a can of cleaning spray in his arms. _

"_Hey Sam." He smiles and goes to put the things back under the sink._

"_Dean...where's the couch?" Sam asks, frowning at the replacement. "Where did all this stuff come from?"_

"_Yard sale." Dean says pleasantly. "Well, more like a pile of furniture left at the side of the road, but still." He shrugs. "Nice though, right?"_

"_Yeah, it's good." Sam looks around again, not entirely at ease._

"_I called the second hand store and they came for the fold out." Dean informs him. "Forty dollars, which went on a new mattress and some sheets."_

_Sam blinks at him. _

_Dean jerks his thumb at the door on the far side of the apartment. "Go check out your new room."_

_Sam does so with an odd feeling that this is somehow a dream, or a movie of something that happened to someone else – one of those 'Pursuit of Happiness' type things where the main character moves out of their infested basement apartment and into a light and airy home above ground, with a yellow kitchen and a proper flush toilet._

_He's never had his own room before, not since their Mom had died. Because Sam was the youngest, he either shared with Dean, or, when Dean was older and needed more privacy, Sam had slept on the couch or on fold out beds and cots. _

_John's room, which that morning had born the greasy halo of a smoker's residence, a leftover from the previous tenant that Dean hadn't cleaned off because John would just trash the place anyway, was now clean and neat. The stains in the carpet were covered with rugs similar to the one in the living room, the bed was furnished with a springy and unsullied mattress and new, blue sheets, and all of Sam's things had been removed from the hall closet and put on a new shelf, and inside a folding, canvas wardrobe. _

_Sam turns slowly, taking it all in, investigating the placement of his books and random objects that he'd found or bought second, third hand. It's not the new freedom that he has now, or the luxury of having a space to himself, but the fact that Dean did all this without even having to ask what it was that Sam wanted – he'd just known, like always, before Sam had even considered it._

_Dean stands in the doorway, one foot rubbing the back of the other._

"_Do you like it?" he asks, "Because...I can go back, check out that curb again...I think I saw a floor lamp somewhere..."_

_Sam hugs him, squeezing until Dean grins and scrubs his knuckles over Sam's hair. _

"_You don't have to be a girl about it." He mutters, but he's obviously pleased. _

_For dinner they have spaghetti, and the candles keep burning, scenting the apartment over with the smells of baking. Sam digs out the old set of scrabble and beats Dean two out of three, then Dean schools him at poker, and then at Bullshit. _

_When Sam goes to bed, the room already feels like his, with no traces of his father's presence left. He's surprised by how little he misses John, and he thinks sadly that it will take him longer to adjust to the absence of the couch than to the loss of his father – he'd spent more time with it after all. _

_Sam wonders if he should have told Dean what had happened that day at school. But he knows that Dean is struggling as it is with the decisions he has to make, telling him about Castiel's latest activities would only make it worse._

_That day at school, while Dean had laboured to transform their broken home into something more liveable, Sam had encountered the boy he scarcely recognised as Castiel._

_Castiel moved like he was sleepwalking, but looked as if he hadn't rested in months. His hair was dirty, his face looked pinched up and miserable even though his eyes were vacant and introverted. Sam had seen him at the back of the library, where the out of date history books were shelved, huddled up by the ancient iron radiator like he was deeply chilled. He scratched intermittently at the snake tattooed around his wrist, reddening the skin without seeming to notice. Later, in the hall, Sam noticed that the inked skin had started to bleed. _

_Sam couldn't shake the knowledge that this drifting boy, almost his own age and yet looking so much older, was his brother. _

_It was the lesson of a lifetime that Sam had learnt from Dean since their mother died – Family was everything. Older brothers always came through. Whatever the problem, whatever the cost._

_Sam had caught up with Castiel in the men's room between classes, quite by accident._

_Castiel was in the washroom, standing by the sinks with Brian Summers, neither boy noticed that Sam had entered the room, and he froze by the door at the sight before him. _

"_...doesn't want you anymore." Brian was saying. "Thought you'd be interested."_

"_You thought wrong." Castiel muttered, shrinking back from Brian like a kid half his age confronted by a bully. "Just leave me alone."_

"_Don't be like that." Brian touched his arm, and Castiel winced, looking trapped and miserable. "I wasn't really going to tell on you...I just got a little crazy, like when you were going to out me? so let's just...call it even, go outside...and have some fun." His voice dropped low and he crowded in on Castiel, mouth drifting to the side of his face, rubbing their hips together in a gesture so ugly that Sam instantly feels sick. _

_Castiel twists weakly, but he's seemingly too weak or too broken to push Brian away. _

"_Don't...please..." he whines instead, and Brain grunts in exasperation, pushing harder against him._

"_C'mon Cas...don't pretend you've got anything worth protecting, you're hot for it, you know that."_

_Sam shoves Brian to one side before he even realises that he's crossed the room. Brian's shoulder glances off the wall and he turns to glare daggers in Sam's direction. That's when Sam remembers that he's smaller than the other boy, and that Brian has already kicked his ass about a dozen times. _

_But, Sam remembers a time when Dean had gotten John to stop hitting him, even though John was way bigger and drunk beyond noticing the pain. Dean had tackled bullies and debt collectors, drunks and motel creeps without a thought for his own youth and weakness, and now it was Sam's turn to be the older brother, the fighter and not the pseudo-nurse. _

_Sam reeled when Brian smacked him on the nose, but gathered enough awareness to block a punch to the stomach, and kick Brian in the groin, sending him to the ground. Sam backed away, grabbed Castiel's hand and yanked him towards the bathroom door. They were all the way outside before Sam remembered that school wasn't actually over, and that they were now officially cutting. His nose was bleeding. They rounded the corner away from school and Sam stopped to mop at his nose, it wasn't busted as much as he'd feared, just scratched from Brian's ring. _

_Castiel sat down on the kerb and Sam crouched beside him. _

"_Are you alright?" Sam asked eventually._

"_Fine." Castiel told him tonelessly._

_Sam's instinct was to let the silence sit for a while, but the Dean in his brain forced him to push the issue. Older brother's didn't just let it go at 'fine'._

"_Walking around like a zombie and letting Brian feel you up doesn't really scream 'fine'." Sam pointed out._

_Castiel sighed. _

"_I get it, you're mad that I broke up with you for Dean..."_

"_I'm not mad." Castiel tells him. "At you or Dean." _

"_So...what are you?" Sam asks. _

_Castiel looks down at the street. "I miss him."_

_Sam bites down on his tongue for a long moment before he decides to tell Castiel the truth._

"_Dean misses you too."_

_Castiel sits silently for a while, then he gets up and walks away. _

_Now, as Sam lies in bed, he wonders whether he'd done the right thing, being Castiel's big brother for the day. _

_And as he forms an idea in light of this new duty as an elder sibling, he wonders if it's possible for younger brother's to know better after all. And whether it was possible for him to take care of Dean the way he had taken care of him for most of his life. _


	23. Chapter 23

Well, this is really melodramatic, but that's how it came out. (Also – I'm back!)

_The next day, after school, Castiel returns home to find Sam sitting on his doorstep. The older boy had left as usual with Dean long after school had concluded, but Castiel had got to the church to run errands for Michael, and so was late in returning. He stops on the path to the porch, letting his school backpack languish on the paving, hanging limply from one hand. _

_Sam stands up, anxiously brushing at the dust on his pants._

"_Hey." He says quietly._

_Castiel watches him warily. Sam shuffles forwards, overly long jeans scuffling the ground, overgrown bangs tumbling forwards as he looks first at Castiel's feet and then at his face._

"_So...I, uh...wanted to talk to you." Sam mutters._

_Castiel looks if anything, worse than he had the previous day, and Sam wonders for the fiftieth time if this is a good idea, or just the final nail in the coffin. _

"_I don't want to talk." Castiel says evasively. _

"_To me?"_

"_To anyone." Castiel mutters, starting past Sam and towards the house, feet dragging like his shoes are occupied by sandbags. _

_Sam watches his hunched and retreating back, he can see a tiny Chinese character inked on Castiel's pale skin. Courage, the same symbol Sam had seen blinking off and on over a takeout place four apartments previously. _

"_Nice tattoo." He says softly._

"_Go home Sam." Castiel murmurs over his shoulder, voice as beaten down as the rest of him._

"_Not until you hear what I have to say." Sam tells him, stubbornly. _

_Castiel sighs, the only sign of it a slight dip to his shoulders. Sam walks up behind him, takes his hand, which twitches in surprise but does not pull away, and leads Castiel to a bench pushed up against the side of the house. They sit down, Castiel meek and worn down as a long term inmate at a particularly harsh institution. _

_Sam takes a deep breath, and begins. _

"_Dean didn't want to break up with you." _

_Castiel is silent, looking at the tree and the fence in front of them, body limp as a scarecrow, with about as much substance. Sam continues awkwardly._

"_What Dean thought, what he still kind of thinks, is that you'd be better off without him." Sam watches Castiel closely, but the other teen doesn't express any awareness of the irony of Dean's intentions vs Castiel's current condition._

"_It's not just that he's older than you, or to do with taking care of me – Dean thinks he's...wrong for you, specifically."_

"_Why?" Castiel asks after a short silence. _

_This is the part Sam has been dreading, but he has to do it. Castiel is miserable. Dean is practically dead under his layer of denial and pretence, and neither of them could fix the mess that had surrounded them. Only Sam could see that they belonged together, as family, as whatever – they needed each other. It was that simple. Only Dean would never go after Castiel, not when he had convinced himself that it would be selfish of him, or wrong._

_In Sam's experience, no matter how 'wrong' something was supposed to be – it was worth it to end suffering. Whether that meant Dean stealing money to take Sam to the doctor when he had tonsillitis, kicking John out to save them both from his downward spiral, or Castiel being with Dean even now, after everything._

"_Dean found something out...about the two of you, that means you can't...not can't but...that maybe a lot of people would say that you shouldn't, be together." Sam fumbles._

_Castiel looks at him, brows furrowing in confusion. _

"_You mean..." He struggles to understand. "Dean has...HIV...or something...?"_

"_No!" Sam says it louder than he'd intended. "No, it's not that."_

_Castiel looks relieved, Sam chooses not to think about what that means. _

"_Look...Dean told me that your mom was in rehab, in Detroit."_

_Castiel looks ashen. "Why would he tell you that?" He shakes his head slowly. "That was...private, why did you come here to tell me..."_

"_He told me..." Sam touches Castiel's arm to keep him from getting up and storming off. "Because...our Dad, was in rehab, in Detroit. At the same time. He was...with your mom."_

_Castiel looks at him, and Sam can see only confusion and expectance in his eyes. Then his whole face drains of colour, his lips twitch as he sucks in a breath and Castiel shakes his head, slowly, moving as if he wants to get away but has forgotten how to get up and walk. _

"_Cas..." Sam touches his arm and Castiel jumps as if pinched. He gets to his feet and moves forwards awkwardly, one hand reaching out to grasp the trunk of the tree, the other balling up on his stomach._

_Sam looks down at his feet, unable to stand the sight of Castiel retching over the tufts of grass by the fence. _

"_I'm sorry...but I needed you to know..." Sam says quietly._

"_Why?" Castiel spits bile into the grass and croaks, still leaning on the tree, facing away. "It's not enough for me to have my father taken away, now I have to live with..." His back seizes up and he hunches over, shaking with suppressed misery. _

_Sam curls his nails into his palms._

"_He loves you." He tells Castiel. "I know it's...hard to take in right now...but I don't think he can stop – even knowing that you're..."_

"_We're brothers." Castiel's head is still bent towards the ground. "We've always been...since the...fucking start." He turns round, back up against the tree, arms folded as he makes himself smaller. "Go away." He asks softly. _

"_Castiel, I..."_

"_Please?" His face crumples. "Please can't you all just...go away?" _

_He looks so harassed, so victimised, that Sam can't do anything but leave. He can't stand to inflict his presence, so symbolic of the wrong that Castiel is in the grips of, a moment longer. So Sam flees, he ducks around the house, ends up by the front door wondering whether he should go get Dean or wait for Castiel to calm down a little. _

_He waits for a good long time, following the hands on his watch as first a half, then a full hour passes. Still Castiel does not come towards the house from the garden. Sam eventually ventures back into the garden and towards the bench. There's no sign of Castiel by the tree, none by the seat. Sam searches the garden, goes up to the back door and into the house, calling for Castiel quietly. Silence greets him._

_Water drips from a faucet somewhere, and Sam goes further into the house, finding nothing on the ground floor but empty rooms, he goes upstairs. Castiel's bedroom is empty as is Michael's neat little bed and study. Sam goes towards the bathroom, the door is partially open, the light on and a slice of yellow spills out over the carpet. Sam opens the bathroom door fully and finds nothing but white tile and folded towels. _

_Through the window he see's Castiel running along the next street over, in the direction of their apartment._

"_Shit." Sam breathes, already tearing out of the bathroom before he has time to think._

Castiel covers the streets towards Dean like a stray dog bothered by a thousand biting fleas. He feels disturbingly paranoid and overwrought, as if thoroughly stoned and feeling the worst effects. He feels as if every passerby is watching him, knowing him for what he is; the son of two addicts, and a pervert.

It was he who had wanted Dean first, after all, he who had seen the new janitor and been instantly captivated with the man who no one else seemed to see as he did. He had approached Dean, revelled in every touch, in each act he and the older man performed. He'd taken Dean to the closet where they had first touched each other, and he had loved every second of it. He was the sick bastard who'd finally sunk beyond depravity – until the only act that could satisfy him was fucking his own brother.

He feels sick again, presses both palms to the side of a store and rests his forehead on the rough brick between them.

This is the punishment that he deserved, Castiel thinks dimly as his stomach twists. He'd run from the knowledge of his real father, from the truth, and now God had thrown Dean in his path, and he had allowed the grim reality to slide inside of him and make its home there. A truth as undeniable as the pleasure he had chased blindly.

_I still love him. _Castiel whimpers at the back of his mind, so small and broken as to be nonexistent.

"I still want him." Cas whispers against the brick, then gathers himself and pushes away from the wall, running in the direction of Dean's apartment.


	24. Chapter 24

Castiel loped up the steps to Dean and Sam's apartment, feeling for all the world like a stray dog seeking shelter from where only kicks had come before. This time he fully expects pain, and he's already tensing, stomach acidic and skin prickling with cold static, as he knocks on the door.

It's such a natural gesture, one he has performed so many times before. But now it's so out of place as to be almost laughable.

Dean answers in his habitual t-shirt and jeans, his feet bare on the faded carpet. This too resonates as out of sync with the pounding in Castiel's temples, the yellow bile churning in his stomach.

He had expected to feel revulsion, anger, maybe a touch of despair. And all three are there, bubbling under the surface of his clammy skin like memories of past emotion. Primarily he feels weakened, as if suffering a wasting sickness, and the sight of Dean, looking at him with shock and not a little anxiety, brings him not the anger he was expecting, but a wave of longing so familiar that for a second the hours reverse and he is ignorant again. Ignorant and miserable – but with some shallow hope.

A hope that was now gone for good.

"How could you do this?" He asks, mouth bitter and numbed as if by anaesthetic, the words falling out like rotten teeth. "How could you just leave me...and let me find out like this?"

Dean seems to shrink, losing layers of hard worn age and bad experience, becoming the teenager he'd been years before, at a loss as to how to proceed, how to make this better – only knowing that it was his duty, his fault, and his failure that had resulted in this cat's cradle of problems.

"I didn't know what to do." He admits, and like the plaintive whine of a kicked dog it offers no defence, only apology.

Castiel can't quite form words, can't determine what needs to be said, there's just a screaming urge to claw the poison out from under his skin, to get it all out and away from him. But he can see in Dean's flat, green eyes the same knowledge that Sam had burdened him with. They both know, both have this...thing in them now, like a disease, an awareness of their very cells, the blood in their veins.

Castiel's fury and self destruction plunge into a depression so deep and so sudden that it's like being thrown down an elevator shaft. Just depth and darkness and no hope of escape. Only it's not an elevator shaft – it's the well he'd thought of, the place love would send you. Alone, to die screaming into the lonely dark.

Dean watches him deflate, sagging in on himself as if he's aged a hundred years in a single second.

"Cas..." he raises a hand and Castiel flinches back. Dean drops his arm, defeat etched on his face.

"Why is this happening?" Castiel asks quietly. He looks up at Dean, as if expecting an answer. "What did we do? What did I do?"

Dean's shunted into silence by the beaten, fearful words, astonished that Castiel could ever think that this was his fault. It was he after all, who had decided it was ok to sleep with a minor, and even after he'd realised just how shattered Castiel was, he had continued to force the teenager to lower his defences, until circumstance delivered the killing blow to the unmasked and vulnerable teen.

He's about to speak, not even knowing what will come out of his mouth, when Sam pelts across the parking lot, scrabbling to a stop as he catches sight of Dean and Castiel in the doorway of the apartment, both shrinking from each other as if afraid of contamination.

"Dean...I'm sorry..." Sam pants, clutching at the end of the stair rail for support. "I thought...if I told him..."

"I've got it Sam." Dean tells him, recovering something of himself in his younger brother's presence. Looking at Castiel, he begs with his eyes, even with the limpness of his limbs. "Come in?"

Castiel nods, but waits for Dean to move well out of the way before going into the apartment. Dean watches him go in, feeling too much too fast to be aware of anything but nausea. "Sammy...can you go...get a burger...or something?" he asks, misery tattooed over his features so that Sam hardly recognises him. He just nods, turning and leaving Dean alone on the walk way.

Dean watches Sam go, watches even after Sam disappears from view. A car goes past on the road, some kids are yelling a few streets over. The door to the apartment yawns behind him, dark and inescapable. Dean steels himself, though of course there is no protection from what has to be addressed, and goes inside.

Castiel stands in the middle of the room, hugging himself as if cold, he doesn't look up as Dean comes in.

Dean stands, mute and frozen for a second.

"Say something." Castiel asks quietly.

"I don't know what to..."

"Anything." Castiel looks at him, desperate. "Just anything right now would be..." His face twists, stricken. "How could this happen? How could we not...know?"

"It's not exactly something anyone'd think of." Dean pinches his eyes shut and opens them again. "I still can't believe it."

"...maybe it's not true?" Castiel says uncertainly.

"I saw that tattoo." Dean tells him tiredly. "I...just...I know. I can feel it."

"Great." Castiel lets loose with watery sarcasm. "As long as you know. It can't possibly be wrong, can it? A week ago you 'knew' you loved me – remember that?"

Dean looks down at the floor. Castiel looks at his bent head.

"Sam told me you do...still..." He swallows. "Is that true?"

Dean says nothing, doesn't even look at him.

"Well is it?" He sounds half disgusted, even to his own ears. "...how can you?"

"I don't know, ok?" Dean looks up, face solidly gripped by confusion and stubbornness. "I can't just..." He shakes his head. "I can't just _stop_."

Castiel's eyes flicker, and he looks quickly away, but not before Dean detects a hint of what might be relief, and perhaps happiness, though short lived.

"I have just been sitting at home...hoping that that was true." Castiel says softly. "Just...hoping that it wasn't all a lie. That you weren't just trying to...get into my pants." He laughs, short and bitter. "Except you already got in there for nothing, so why would you have to lie?"

"I didn't lie." Dean murmurs. "And I never just wanted..." He grits his teeth, ashamed. "Maybe it started like that...but I wasn't using you, not once I got to know what it meant to you."

Castiel nods slowly, distractedly, like he's taking it all in.

"I love you..." Dean says again. "And I've been...stuck with this, knowing this, for...days. And all I wanted, was to tell you – to...try and make this..." he sighs. "But I didn't want to make it worse for you...to make you live with it."

"You thought I couldn't take it." Castiel says grimly, then he looks up. "Does he know?"

Dean blinks at him.

"Your...our...Dad, does he know, about me?"

"Yes." Dean admits. "I...told Sam and he heard I guess."

"Where is he now?" Castiel asks quietly.

Dean sighs and drops down onto the couch. "I...kicked him out." He looks up, once again a teenager himself, stripped of all his armour. "I just couldn't take it...not after...and he's been a dead weight on me and Sam for so long..."

"And I have that...in me." Castiel mutters, mostly to himself. "How can you want me around, if you can't stand him..."

"You've never hit me, or Sam...and you don't steal, lie, manipulate..." Dean shrugs. "You've never drank yourself into a coma and left me to take care of Sammy."

"No, I just take bad pills and pass out in the street."

Dean looks down at the carpet.

"I'm a whore." Castiel says blankly. "I'm worse...I do it for free...and I drink, I take...everything." He swallows, squaring up. "I've woken up in stranger's houses...wondered off high. I fucked my way through my entire peer group, and some of the older guys, girls...their parents." He glances at Dean's creased brow. "Yeah...I've really been around, and...my mom was an addict, and my Dad...this is just me. This is who I'm supposed to be."

"Michael doesn't think so."

"Michael doesn't kno..." Castiel trails off. "Oh. He does."

"I didn't tell him...it, John, told him. He was drunk."

Castiel closes his eyes.

"You know he told me I'd always be his son." Castiel mutters. "I suppose it's different now I'm not just a slut, I'm the kid who screwed his brother...and I wasn't even stoned. Utterly sober...and still a fucking screw up."

"You're not." Dean says automatically, the self loathing in Castiel's voice tugging at his heart. "You're just...a lot of crap happened to you, but it's not your fault. And it...it just doesn't touch you. You're perfect."

Castiel looks in danger of crumpling to the carpet. "Please...don't say things like that."

"It's true."

"It makes me want..." He looks pained. "I just, I can't come over there, I can't...be with you. And then you say things like that and all I want is..." His eyes meet Dean's. "I can't want you right now."

Dean looks at him, and the sharpest loss he's ever experienced lances through him.

"Come here." He asks softly.

Castiel gazes at him uncertainly.

"I'm your brother." He reminds Dean quietly.

Dean raises his hand.

"Come here." He asks again, resignation tinting his words.

Castiel crosses the carpeted floor in a series of faltering steps, when he gets close enough, Dean closes his fingers gently around the teen's wrist, pulling the small figure down and onto his lap. Castiel goes limp against him, scrunching as close as possible. Dean hesitates for a second, then combs his fingers over Castiel's lank hair, tracing down to the stubble on his jaw. After a few seconds he shifts Castiel closer and rests his face in the tangle of dark hair. His arms surround the skinny teenager, hands flattened on the knobs of his spine. Castiel breathes shakily, holding onto Dean just as tightly, face buried against Dean's chest. Dean closes his eyes and just holds on.

"Dean?" Castiel murmurs after a while.

"Mmmmm?" Dean rumbles.

"What if I don't care?" Castiel asks softly.


	25. Chapter 25

Dean stills instantly, even his blood seems to cease its endless cycle to freeze at Castiel's words. The teenager shifts uncertainly, almost pulling away, one foot already on the floor.

"I'm sorry...I can just..."

Dean pulls him back, holds onto him, and, in a series of slow movements, stopping every inch to check Castiel's response, he leans forwards, and brushes their lips together.

Everything in him tells Dean that this is wrong. His whole body burns with the instinct to pull away, to get away. Like lungs too long starved of oxygen his limbs protest against their hold on Castiel. But as the teenager kisses back, the ache in his chest increases beyond endurance, and Dean is assaulted by so much relief that all the rest is washed away. Until he can't feel the wrongness crawling under his skin for the touch of Castiel's hands on him, tentative at first, then bolder.

Dean leans back against the couch, bringing Castiel closer, relearning the shape and taste and resilience of his familiar mouth. Castiel makes a sound, a strangled whine laced with the first traces of a sob, but when Dean tries to pull away he holds him close, soothes him with a touch that tells Dean that everything is all right – that this is not agony, but the surprise of being happy, when consigned to never feeling joy again. So unexpected it almost hurt.

After a while their mouths part for air, and Castiel presses his lips to the curve of Dean's shoulder, shaking, holding on for all he's worth. Dean strokes the dark hair of Castiel's crown reassuringly.

"It's ok...I'm not going anywhere."

Castiel squeezes him tighter, a drop of salt water rolls down Dean's shoulder and under his shirt. He shushes Castiel gently, all the while feeling the unfamiliar lurch of sudden relief, sudden reprieve.

"How long since you last slept?" he asks quietly.

Castiel shivers against him. "I don't remember." He whimpers against Dean's skin. "Please, please don't make me leave."

Dean squeezes him gently.

"I'm not going to." He promises. "But I am putting you to bed, I'll call your...I'll call Michael ok? Tell him where you are...that you're alright." He strokes Castiel's hair softly, then gently leads him to his feet, taking him to his own bedroom.

It's messy, in the average way – clothing draped here and there, the single mattress on the double box spring still making the place look like a crack den. But Castiel doesn't say anything, or give any sign that he's noticed. The sheets aren't clean, Dean had slept in them, but he pulls them to one side, gesturing that Castiel can slide under in his vest and jeans. Castiel kicks his shoes off and climbs into the bed, laying his head against the pillow and feeling days of exhaustion finally catch up with him.

"I'll be right outside." Dean promises, unable to resist touching Castiel again, tracing a damp line on his cheek where a tear had tracked its way.

"Does it make me a terrible person that I want you to stay?" Castiel asks in a small voice.

Dean kisses the wet trail on the teenager's cheek.

"I don't know." He says, honestly. "But if it does, we're both terrible."

He leaves Castiel to sleep, goes outside to the payphone and calls Michael Novak to tell him that his son is safe at the apartment, and is spending the night.

Michael is silent on the line.

"You told him." He says eventually.

"Sam did...he wanted us to work it out, I think he was worried about Castiel."

"I see." Michael intones thoughtfully. "And have you, worked it out?"

Dean scuffs the floor of the booth.

"I don't know...maybe."

"Maybe, is not good enough for my son, Dean." Michael tells him. "Be sure. Follow through – that's all I ask."

"I have no intention of hurting him." Dean assures him.

"No one has ever intended to hurt Castiel." Michael says pointedly. "Somehow he always seems to get damaged anyway. Carelessness." Michael pauses. "Be careful with him, please. And I'll expect him back tomorrow morning."

"I'll drive him over." Dean promises.

"Good." Michael pauses again. "I do trust you Dean...I hope you know that."

"I do now sir." Dean ducks his head, hand sweating on the telephone.

"And I heard about your father...I know you can do the right thing, no matter how hard...but I am sorry, for what it's worth, that it came to that."

"Thank you." Dean murmurs.

Michael rings off and Dean places the receiver back in its cradle.

Sam taps on the glass, a half a burger in one hand, a plastic cup of soda in the other.

Dean goes outside and takes in his brother's anxious expression.

"Did Castiel go?"

"No...he's uh...still inside." Dean looks up at the apartment. "He's sleeping."

Sam looks at him as if he can't quite decided how to feel about that. "In...your bed?"

"Yeah...but I'm not going to be...you know, in there with him." Dean reassures him. "He's just exhausted...and..." he sighs. "He can't sleep, I don't think he's slept since..."

Sam nibbles the corner of his mouth.

"You could, you know, share – if you wanted." He mutters.

"Sammy..."

"No, it's fine." Sam looks at him, clearly trying to make his face a mask of nonchalance and failing miserably. "I mean...that couch is wicked uncomfortable anyway, and I kind of like having a room to myself."

"We really need to talk about this, don't we?" Dean sighs.

"I already said, its fine." Sam tells him stubbornly.

"Except it's not." Dean interjects. "You say it's fine, and you obviously wanted us to stop being apart and miserable...but by not being apart, we're being together and...I hadn't thought about how to handle that with you..."

"I'm leaving for college eventually..."

"That's not what I mean and you know it." Dean says roughly. "You're my brother, of course I want you here." He looks down at the ground. "This doesn't change that...and I love you, ok? I want you to be here, with me, where I can look out for you. Because now...we're officially all the family we've got."

"Except Castiel." Sam says quietly.

"Castiel isn't my brother, not like you." Dean tells him. "I didn't see him come home from hospital with Mom, see how proud she was of him...I didn't sit up with him when he had croup and chicken pox and I sure as hell didn't change him and feed him and teach him to play football - that's us, ok? You're the only brother I have." He squeezes Sam's shoulder. "What me and Cas have is...different, but it's not better or more important than you and me."

Sam hugs him, properly, both arms around his waist, uneaten food dropped to the gravel. Dean hugs him back.

"I am so proud of you." He whispers against Sam's ear. "You,are an awesome big brother."

Sam looks up at him.

"Cas can still be my brother?"

"He's probably going to need you, a lot." Dean says sombrely. "This is going to be hard going, all of this...it's going to take some getting through."

"What else is new?" Sam says, but without the bitterness that any other teenager would have picked up by now. Instead he looks forewarned, prepared for whatever lies ahead, and in that moment Dean thinks that he didn't do a bad job raising Sam, not by a long shot.

He and Sam go back up to the walkway, and Sam goes to bed with a small smile and an encouraging wave towards where Castiel is sleeping, just behind the cheap plywood door.

Dean can't even bring himself to sit on the couch, to waste a second, instead he goes straight into his own bedroom, opening the door a crack and looking in on Castiel.

Castiel blinks at him from the tangle of sheets.

"You should be sleeping." Dean mutters.

"Come sleep with me." Castiel says quietly.

Dean feels that sharp pang of reprieve again, almost painful safety and comfort. He kicks out of his boots and climbs in beside Castiel slowly, until the teenager moves against him, jean clad legs lying against his own. Castiel lays his head against Dean's chest and lets out a breath.

"I missed you, so much." He murmurs.

Dean tucks the sheets closer around them both, settles the side of his face against the top of Castiel's head comfortably.

"I missed you too."

And that, Dean thinks, in the cloudy warmth of sleep that has eluded both of them for the past few nights, is really the only thing knew, right down to the heart of him.


	26. Chapter 26

_I really don't want to end another fic with a montage...but maybe I will...soon. Anyway, as usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. I would be ecstatic to sell more copies _

Dean wakes up with Castiel beside him. One of his hands has crept up the back of Cas's vest, resting on the hot skin on the ridges of his spine. Castiel rubs sleepily against him and Dean feels a blush of icy dread in his stomach. But then Castiel wakes up and smiles at him, Dean kisses him and they shuffle out of the sheets.

They get up, go to the kitchen and Dean gets out a carton of eggs, a bag of sliced bread and a half pint of milk. He turns to get out plates and cutlery, and hears Castiel start cracking eggs into the pan and scrambling them. He catches the teenagers eye, smiles, then dips his head and starts on the toast.

Sam wakes up to breakfast on the counter, and Castiel and Dean already eating together, sitting on the couch.

"Morning Sam." Castiel says awkwardly, as Sam emerges from his room and blinks at them.

"Hey." Sam manages a smile in return, collects his breakfast and hovers for a moment before Dean gets up and goes to do the dishes, leaving a seat next to Castiel on the couch.

Sam picks at his eggs for a while in silence.

"Thank you, for yesterday." Castiel says eventually.

Sam looks him in the eye for the first time since telling him that they were brothers.

"Thanks for staying with him." He says quietly, watching Dean scrub pans out of the corner of his eye.

"I'm not just staying with Dean." Castiel tells him softly. "I'd like...if it's ok...I'd like to think of you as family...if that's not too weird."

"It'll get less weird." Sam hopes aloud.

"I really want to believe that." Castiel mutters.

There's a short silence, and when Sam speaks again it's at normal volume.

"These eggs are great by the way."

Castiel blinks at him.

Sam shrugs. "Dean always overcooks them, I figured you made these."

"I did."

"They're good." Sam says again.

"Thank you." Castiel finishes his breakfast and goes to wash his plate at the sink.

Sam really hopes that they can be, if not normal, at least easier with each other, in the future. As he's had to live with John all his life, Sam figures he can get used to anything.

Dean drives Castiel home after breakfast, it's the weekend, so at least there's no school to worry about. When he pulls up outside the house, Castiel turn to him, kisses him hesitantly. The last thing he says is,

"It'll work out – I'll try to work it out."

Dean kisses him back and promises that he'll be over that evening to see him.

Castiel goes into the house and closes the door. There's an odd little silence, and then Michael comes out of the kitchen, a cup of tea in his hands.

"Are you alright?" Is the first thing he asks.

Castiel considers this.

"I don't really know." He confesses. Michael nods sagely.

"Why don't we go sit down...I have something I want to run by you."

Castiel and his father sit down at the dining table in the living room, and Michael disappears into the kitchen, returning with another cup of tea and a plate of ginger biscuits, which as Castiel's favourites and a treat he remembers after skinned knees, successful mathlete competitions and after bouts of illness.

Michael also has a folded pamphlet, which he places on the table after a moments deliberation, like a chancy move in a poker game.

Pamela Barnes. Psychiatrist.

Castiel looks at the writing, plain and authoritative, with a mix of unpleasant shock and a sense that the inevitable has come to pass.

"What took you so long?" he asks, half shifting an eyebrow to take the sting out of his words.

Michael looks down at the pamphlet.

"I just think it would help you to...understand what you're going through."

Castiel nods thoughtfully.

"Dean could go with you." Michael suggests. "Pamela is a friend, from the church. I can guarantee her discretion...and she could help you both...cope, better than I can."

Castiel looks at the watermark on the paper, leaves on a pond, drifting in ripples.

"I won't make you go, if you don't want to."

"I want to." Castiel says quietly. "I want...I think I need to work out who I am...and what Dean is as far as I'm concerned...this'll help." He looks up. "Thanks Dad."

Michael smiles just slightly, it's a smile that Castiel himself uses, learnt from Michael over the years.

"If you want to talk to me about it too, you can." Michael tells him. "And I'll pay, for you and Dean to see Pamela, if he wants to go."

"I think he should." Castiel muses. "I think he will...once I talk to him."

Michael blushes awkwardly, and so Castiel knows what's coming next before his father even utters the words.

"Castiel...much as I realise that the two of you are...and have been, in love...and that this is what makes you happy...I can't not wonder if perhaps it would be damaging to...become physical, too soon..."

Castiel touches his father's hand, cutting off the awkward stream of words.

"We're not." He assures him. "And...it's not going to happen, not until I know we can both handle it."

Michael seems relieved.

"How...can you not have a problem with this?" Castiel asks hesitantly. "When Dean told me that you knew...I thought you'd hate us...hate 'it' at least." He shakes his head. "This is...incest, even if we're only half the same blood..."

"I realise that." Michael masters his words carefully. "I also, encouraged you two, even when Dean was just a man who was quite a lot older than you...I encouraged you because...it made you happy, it was healthier...safer...than any other relationship you'd been in...he loves you." Michael sighs. "Dean, loves you...and I can't bring myself to punish the two of you by denying that, not after everything you've been through." He looks at Castiel. "Neither of you are responsible for how you got here – why should you pay for our mistakes?"

"The sins of the father..." Castiel mutters half seriously.

"...are his own responsibility." Michael tells him. "All we should want for our children is the best life they can have...and I think that's what I'm giving you."

Castiel looks at him, really looks at Michael for the first time in a long time.

"For what it's worth...I'm really glad you chose to keep me." Castiel says softly.

"That makes two of us." Michael feels his throat thicken. "I'm glad you stayed with me."

(-*-)

Dean is sewing a button back onto a shirt when there's a thump on the door. When he opens it, it's to find their neighbour, an old man with a cane and a permanent odour of wet wool standing on the walkway.

"A man called me, asked me to get you to call him back." The man tells him. "And also – that you should at least have a cell phone...idjit."

Dean goes down to the payphone to call Bobby. There are so few people that try to phone him that he never really misses having a landline, but even he has to admit that a cell would make life easier.

Bobby picks up on the second ring.

"Where have you been? I've been trying to get hold of you for the last day and a half."

"Sorry...You called my neighbour?" Dean frowns at the graffiti above the phone.

"Called the school first, but they said you hadn't been in that day, then I had to look up your address and find a number in the building." Bobby sighs. "It's about your Dad."

Despite himself, despite all the years of disappointment and put downs and struggling – he still feels a dart of worry.

"What happened?"

"Well, he made it into town at least. Must have hitched the whole way." Bobby crackles some papers. "He just didn't come to the house...he's in hospital."

Dean freezes.

"Some guys found him passed out on the road into town...guess he tried to walk the last stretch." Bobby has never been one for outpourings of sympathy, that's why Dean likes him so much – the capable nature, the practical mind. "They were good guys, took him to the hospital at least, then they called me, guess they recognised him."

"Is he ok?"

"...Not especially. Liquor finally caught up with him." Bobby says quietly. "According to the Doc he's got cirrhosis, kidney failure...it's been building for a long time but he's gone downhill fast, stomach ulcer burst...he lost a lot of blood."

Dean places a clenched fist on the wall of the booth.

"He's been out since they brought him in...but I figured you might want to come see him in case." Dean doesn't need to as 'in case what?'. "No one would blame you if you didn't."

"No...I'll come." Dean mutters. "Do you think he'll still be...I need to give some notice at work, that I'm taking off."

"He's stable now at least." Bobby assures him. "But...they're thinking he needs some serious treatment...and they're not real willing to bestow favours on a drunk with no insurance."

Dean thumps his forehead against the wall of the booth. "Shit...Bobby, I'll pay you back whatever it's costing to keep him there."

Bobby pauses.

"I've been using your Dad's money." He tells him.

Dean is too shocked to speak.

"How much did you give him, before you sent him packing?"

"Just over a thousand." Dean mutters.

"You've got more faith than me." Bobby tuts. "But...he turned up in town with nine hundred and change...and from what the doctors can tell...his blood alcohol is basically nil."

Dean didn't realise he was still capable of faith, but right then, he really does believe in miracles, Santa Claus and fairy tales, for the first time since his mother died.

"I think he must have used the cash to chip in for gas...some food." Bobby is saying. "I'd like to think he was coming to me to get clean...for real this time." He sounds hollow, ashamed, and Dean realises that his father's friend is having a hard time with this. "I can't say I would have let him in."

"You're taking care of him now."

"Yeah...there's that." Bobby sighs. "But...bring Sam down with you...he should see his daddy before...well, before it's too late to have some proud memories."

Dean closes his eyes, not wanting to cry anymore tears over John...finding he doesn't have a say.

"I will."

"See you then son."

"Bye Bobby."


	27. Chapter 27

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. I would be ecstatic to sell more copies _

_Dean calls Castiel right away, he doesn't even go to tell Sam first, because before he does that he needs to stop his skin from shivering and his eyes from running salt lines down his face. He needs to get back in control of himself, and he's working out that the best way to do that is to reach not to someone else, and not bottle it all up until it breaks you._

_Castiel picks up on the second ring._

"_Cas?"_

"_Dean, hi...what's wrong?" Castiel asks, picking up on the distress in Dean's voice even over the bad line._

"_My Dad...is in hospital." Dean wants to say 'John' to keep this neutral, but he's his father, more now than he's ever been. Now that he might be gone for good. "He's got a burst ulcer and organ failure...and..." He feels suddenly guilty. "I didn't mean to...I know he's your dad too..."_

"_I don't know him like you do." Castiel says softly. "Dean...if there's anything I can do..."_

"_I just...I needed to tell someone..." He grips the plastic edge of the booth like a life line. "I'll call work on Monday, take some time off...but...do you want to come and see him...I don't want to force you out of this..."_

"_Of course I'll go." Castiel tells him firmly. "Dean, even if he weren't...I'd still want to be there for you."_

_That tiny amount of relief hits Dean's veins like a designer drug, fast acting and warming him all the way through the cold weight of shock in his gut. _

"_Thank you." _

"_I'll ask Michael right now." Castiel promises. "Dean...come over tomorrow, I'll be clearing out my room...but...I want to see you, especially if you need me."_

_Despite everything, Dean smiles slightly, resting his shoulder against the wall of the phone booth._

"_I'll be there." _

_He hears Castiel swallow nervously._

"_I love you." He whispers, and Dean feels his heart squirm in his chest, doubts that it'll ever stop reacting like that – painfully pleasured. _

"_I love you too."_

_Dean goes upstairs to tell Sam, and the look on his little brother's face is almost too painful to look at. He sits up half the night with Sam leaning against his side, his arms wrapped around the teenager, squeezing tightly every time Sam shakes with a sob. They had both known that it would end like this, that John would drink himself to death...but they had not expected it to hurt this much, or at all. But still the pain came, keen and sharp, torturing their already tender heart with its spiteful edges._

"_I want to go." Sam tells Dean at around four am._

"_Sam..." Dean sighs. "...alright." He surprises himself by adding._

"_Alright?" Sam seems surprised. _

"_He's your dad, you should be there." Dean mutters. "I...want you to be there."_

"_...is Castiel going?" Sam asks hesitantly. _

"_Would you not what him there?" Dean mutters._

_Sam is silent for a while._

"_He's dad's son." Sam says finally. "He should be allowed to go."_

"_Then he will." Dean squeezes his floppy haired brother again. "But I'll be there for you, ok? Just the two of us." He rubs Sam's shoulder. "And dad being...gone. That doesn't change this, I'm still here for you – I'll never leave you."_

_Sam straightens a little._

"_But you will." He says softly, face still wet and eyes puffy from crying, one side of his face creased from Dean's shirt. _

"_No way. Someone's got to look out for you." Dean half smiles._

"_Yeah...but...I'll go to college and, you should be with Cas, next year when...when we have to move."_

_Dean closes his eyes, wonders when Sam got so smart, so selfless. Wonders how his own efforts at parenting and John's presence had somehow created such a brilliant kid. He likes to think that it's the part of their Mom in him._

"_We can work that out later." Dean mutters._

_Of course, what he really means is 'after'. _

_(-*-)_

Castiel tells Dean about the councillor the next day, while they sit on the floor in Castiel's room, bagging up rubbish to be tossed out. There is rather a lot of stuff that Castiel would prefer not to see again; porn magazines and sex aids and stashes of pills that he'd forgotten about. There are condoms in all of his pants pockets, an outfit of black suspenders and a long tailed white shirt that he'd worn to get laid at a club, the metal fixings from his piercings, all removed now and healing over. There's also the really bad stuff, the reminders of the things he'd done – underwear both male and female, a couple of blank looking DVD's which show him having sex that he can't even remember, the pictures of himself, of the old him, that he'd tortured with cigarettes and scissors into curls of warped plastic.

Dean helps him to scoop all of this into black plastic trash bags, touching his hand every now and again to show him that it's ok. That they can do this. That is can get better, like a wound washed clean of poison.

Castiel almost cries when they reach the oldest layer of mess. There's a jumper of his mother's that he'd kept hold of, because it smelt like her, and which, after she'd died, he'd picked apart, strand by strand, until it became a shaggy woollen mess. He has pictures of Michael that he'd snaffled to look over endlessly, cataloguing their differences like prison sentences. There's the kitchen knife he'd cut himself with, fourteen times up the back of his leg. Finally, tucked with the knife behind the dresser, Castiel finds his journal.

It's a leather bound book, and at the very start it's just a list of things that he did that day. Things he had to remember, more an organiser than a diary. But after his mother's death it changes alarmingly into something else. There's no record of the secret she told him, nowhere has he written about his own feelings. But for three months after her death he has noted, on each page in weird, spidery writing that looks nothing like the prior smooth cursive – _a.j mouth, s.t. hand, m. me touch it. _On and on, a record of all the depraved things he'd done, and with whom.

He doesn't even remember most of them.

The deeds are erratic, back and forth between the debauched and the almost innocent first experiences of a teenager. Like he wasn't really in control of his acts, the way he had thought at the time. He had been in free fall. Alison James, Soloman Trene or Steven Turner...Mark Cotton? Marianne Cox?...Mr. Carter – fifth period math.

The record of his achievements, of his school work and AP commitments, had become a confused list of all the filthy things he'd done, and had allowed to be done to him. Like he'd wanted to show someone, show her, exactly what he'd done.

In places he'd pressed so hard that the pen had gone through the page.

Dean takes the book from him when Castiel remains frozen for several minutes. He flips through the pages, looking at the lists of names, longer and longer as the pages flick past, less 'hand' and 'touch' fewer 'she's' and more 'ass' more 'fuck' and 'mouth'. The two words used in conjunction as with – _b.p/a.m – ass/mouth. _Castiel used between them like a shared gym towel.

Castiel looks at the floor, eyes turned blurry by the shame of it; not because of what his mother would think, or even his father, but because he had let it happen to his own body, hell, he had sought it out. And now he couldn't remember if he'd enjoyed it, or if they'd hurt him. Couldn't even remember their names.

Dean tosses the book onto the bed, wraps his arms around him.

"It doesn't matter now." He murmurs, hands rubbing up and down Castiel's back. "It's done with." He holds on to Castiel for a while, rubbing away the traces of the other men and women who had used him, men who were older, who knew better and had still done those things to Castiel – who had cared so little for him that they had left him at truck stops and on back roads to find his own way home. Men who had invited their friends without asking him, like he was a bottle of cheap wine or a grubby console controller – to be passed around and shared for fun.

After a while Dean goes back to clearing the room, shoving panties and shiny condoms like sweet wrappers into bags alongside anal beads and blackened photographs.

Castiel sits on the bed, and when Dean has finished he sits beside him. Castiel slides into his lap, and they rip the pages of the journal out slowly, one at a time; shredding past mistakes together.


	28. Chapter 28

_Ok, so I'm pretty much with this for the long haul. Both of the last two chapters were actually meant to reach the hospital itself, but clearly there's a lot more stuff to work out than I thought. So the story is going to continue for a while._

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. I would be ecstatic to sell more copies _

On Monday they climb into the impala together, Dean, Sam and Castiel. There isn't even a slight wavering before they all climb into the front, Dean behind the wheel, Sam tucked up next to him, and Castiel by the opposite door.

Castiel had refused Michael's offer to come with them. There was something that seemed not all together fair in the prospect of seeing John and Michael side by side. One man measured against the other. Castiel didn't want to judge them, and he couldn't stand for Dean to think he was. So they go alone, the three of them.

It's a long and quiet drive to Bobby's house, which as Castiel now understands it, is a set out apart from the town it's technically a part of. Dean keeps the radio off and they don't talk much; Dean is focused on what they'll find when they get where they're going, Sam doesn't quite know how to deal with Castiel, and Castiel for his part is worried that he'll say the wrong thing.

After two hours of driving Sam starts to sag to one side, his two sleepless nights catching up with him. He nods to sleep against Dean's shoulder and Castiel can't help but envy him that comfort. How simple it would be if he were only one thing to Dean, instead of this uneasy mix.

"You ok?" Dean asks after a while.

"Yeah." Castiel fiddles with his fingers.

They drive in a stilted silence whilst Dean chews over what it is that he's about to say.

"I can't get over how weird this is." He says finally. "How different it all got, so fast."

Castiel looks down at his knees, Dean glances at the top of his bowed head and swallows awkwardly.

"I mean..." he continues, softer, more conflicted than accusing. "We...uh..." he sucks in a breath. "We did it right here...didn't we?"

"Yes." Castiel admits, throat dry.

"Right here in my car." Dean repeats. "And...it didn't mean anything..." he shakes his head, frustrated. "I don't mean...of course it meant something. But it was just...easy, you know? I wanted you, you wanted me...and it just happened. Simple." He looks out at the road, contemplative. "And it's...now it's all different, and there's all this stuff twisted up with us...and it's complicated."

"If you'd rather not..." Castiel winces. "I mean...we don't have to, ever...we can work around..."

Castiel pinches his leg through the fabric of his slacks, Dean sees, leaning over and taking his pale hand in his own stronger one.

"That's just it...I don't think I've wanted anyone else, since you. Not wanted like...not just like that, but other things too – wanted them with me, wanted to see them every day." Dean says seriously, quietly. Putting his hand back on the wheel he looks at Castiel quickly before returning his eyes to the road. "And the thing is...I know we have to wait...I just wanted to let you know that...that it doesn't matter to me, ok? Even if we're waiting forever. I want you. That's not gonna change, just because we can't..." He winces at the phrasing, tries again. "Just because we're not having sex."

Castiel doesn't think that anyone has ever wanted him as something other than a brief partner in some sex act or another. Even Dean, he had thought, even wanting a relationship with him – Castiel had assumed that like all others, that relationship would hinge on sex. Mutual, loving, sex – but sex all the same.

And, as with a lot of things concerning Dean, what he assumed had not necessarily been correct. Because here Dean was offering him a lifetime, an eternity as far as he was able to give, of affection, companionship and love. Real, honest to god love – for the rest of their lives together...and it didn't rely on sex, like Castiel had thought. It seemed that Dean was offering it, all of it, for the privilege of knowing him, of simply having Castiel in his life.

"Dean?" Castiel realises that he's been frozen in awe for a moment, and now comes back to himself, watching Dean look out at the route in front of them. "Just in case...in case you're not sure by now?" Castiel wets his lips slightly. "I don't think I've ever wanted anything, more than I want you...and it was never because of what you did to me...what I did with you...it was what you did for me. All the little things that made me feel like a person...that's why I'm here right now. That's why I'm always going to be here."

Dean swallows, the lump in his throat, real or imagined, dispersing. The light from the sun on the mirror flashes up at them, and Castiel thinks that, whilst it helps to know a thing, sometimes it doesn't hurt to be reminded.

(-*-)

Bobby's home looms out of the road ahead like a junk pile. The mismatched roof tiles and pieces of siding all blending together into the surrounding mass of scrap cars and rusting metal. Dean nudges Sam awake as they get closer, and Castiel watches the building approach, trying to imagine what it must have been like for Dean as a child, coming here just after his mother had died. He wonders if Dean was vaguly disconcerted, as he himself is now, or whether to him the piles of cars and the squat, ugly building meant unfamiliar safety. A solidity that he found himself suddenly in need of.

Bobby doesn't come out to meet them, instead Dean climbs out of the car and takes out their bags, waits for the two teenagers and then leads them up to the porch and through a screen door and the open side door, into the kitchen where Bobby is sitting at the table, pieces of a gun laid out before him for cleaning. Bobby, Castiel notes, is a medium height man with scruffy greying hair and stubble, and the most keenly evaluating eyes he has ever seen.

"Bobby, hey." Dean puts his holdall down by the kitchen door, letting Sam's backpack and Castiel's bag fall on top.

"Dean, Sam." Bobby stands up and looks at Castiel.

"This is Cas..." Dean pauses for a moment. "I mentioned..."

"Yeah, you did." Bobby says gruffly, and Castiel wonders just what Dean has told him since the revelation of John's illness. "Good to meet you son." Bobby nods at him shortly.

"And you, Sir." He moves his head uncertainly in a similar gesture, and thinks that perhaps he sees a flicker of approval in the older man's eyes.

Bobby hugs Dean, and the gesture clearly isn't one he performs often, judging by the surprised and faintly shaken look on Dean's face. Sam hugs the older man too and then they stand awkwardly.

"Well...I was headed out to the hospital in an hour." Bobby tells them. "You boys get settled in upstairs and then we'll go I guess."

Dean thanks him and leads the way upstairs, showing Sam a room at the end of the hall. It's been a long time since Sam stayed with Bobby, and he was so young then that he can't really remember it. The house has the vague feeling of a childhood dream, sharp in some areas, blurred in others.

Dean pauses on the landing by another bedroom door.

"Uh...there' s a room here if you don't want..." he looks at Castiel awkwardly. "If you don't want to share tonight that's fine."

"Wherever you want me to stay." Castiel murmurs.

Dean looks at him a second, then takes his hand and nudges a door further down the hallway open. Inside is a double bed with faded blue sheets, a window with yellowed curtains, and a dresser with nothing on it.

"Not exactly the Ritz." Dean mutters apologetically, dropping his bag and sitting on the bed experimentally.

"It's fine." Castiel assures him, coming to sit beside him. He puts and arm around Dean's back, resting his head on the other man's shoulder. Dean leans down against the top of Castiel's head.

"What if I can't handle it? Seeing him?" he mutters.

"You won't be on your own." Castiel soothes him, "We'll be there."

Dean is silent for a while.

"He might hate me...or...I don't want to think that he was trying to get better, and be wrong – again." He says finally.

"I don't think you can help what you're hoping for." Castiel's tone is rueful. He thinks for a moment, and then finally asks the question he's been dreading. "What if he thinks I'm...bad...if he's...disgusted by...by us." He catches Dean's eye as the other man straightens up. "What if he's...if I spent this long wondering what he'd be like...and he's..."

Dean slides his arms around the smaller man and rests their foreheads together.

"It doesn't matter what he thinks of you...ok? He doesn't know you...and..." Dean wets his lips. "You're a better man than he deserves to have a claim on...I mean...you're free, not part of his...it hasn't twisted you..." Castiel cuts him off with a kiss, sipping a breath before their lips touch softly. He draws away after, feeling Dean relax a little against him, warm and solid.

"You're the best man I've ever met, aside from Michael." Castiel tells him gently. "Whatever it was...or however it happened...something really went right with you."

When Dean kisses him back, Castiel presses against him, and for the first time since discovering the truth of where he'd come from, he feels honest desire at the touch of Dean's body. And from the way the other man moves against him, a fierce mix of desire and possession, he can tell that Dean feels it too.


	29. Chapter 29

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. I would be ecstatic to sell more copies _

Their hour is all too brief, Dean and Castiel meet up with Sam in the hallway downstairs as they wait for Bobby. Dean hugs his brother, pats his back and Sam squeezes him back. Outside, Bobby stands as if about to get into his car and the three boys head towards the impala.

"Cas, why don't you ride with me?" Bobby calls.

Castiel glances up at Dean, who in turn levels a curious and slightly suspicious look at Bobby. The older man just nods slightly, opening the car door beside him.

Dean touches Castiel's back lightly. "It's alright, I promise."

Castiel turns and, with only a slight hesitation, kisses Dean gently on the side of his mouth.

"I'll see you there." He mutters, moving away and heading towards Bobby.

The two of them get into the car and Dean watches as they drive away.

"Why does Bobby want to go with Castiel?" Sam asks as they climb into the impala.

"I guess he wants to talk to him." Dean mutters, starting the engine and trying not to think about what such a talk might entail.

(-*-)

The car is old, the upholstery full of dust and shiny on the headrests from so many restless passengers. Castiel counts a total of seventeen cardboard air fresheners in the shape of pine trees dangling from the rear-view mirror and the controls on the malfunctioning air conditioner. Bobby clearly knows the single lane road well, driving quickly and surely, the stubbled fields on either side of them flashing by quickly.

"So...you're John's son?" Bobby says gruffly after a full fifteen minutes of silence.

"Dean told you." Castiel sighs.

"Well, he didn't tell me much...but yeah, he seemed to think it was worth a mention." Bobby looks out at the road. "Any idea what you kids are going to do about that?"

"We want to be together." Castiel tells him.

"And you think that's the safest, sanest thing to do?" Bobby queries.

"I have thought about it, and Dean has too..."

"I bet you both have...and I'll bet you've only gotten as far was whether the two of you can stand being of the same blood and still acting like husband and wife."

Castiel remains silent.

"I see how Dean looks out for you, and he's told me enough to guess that you two are serious...but kid, you've got your whole life to go yet, and Dean..." he sighs. "Dean was not blessed with the best family, with the best life...and with this as well he's giving up any chance of ever being normal."

Castiel feels a stab of guilt.

"Which, I'm not saying is down to you." Bobby adds quickly. "He's old enough to make his own choices, hell, he's been doing that since he was old enough to tie his shoes. But both of you need to wonder what it'll be like when you're trying to live together and someone finds out what you are to each other...how, if in ten years when you're married and you've adopted kids from...china or someplace, someone could come on in and rip your lives apart with this."

"I don't want that to happen." Castiel says quietly.

"I know, and maybe it won't...but you've got to think about this, and hard. Because Dean's older than you, he's a man...he's your brother...and that's gonna raise a hell of a lot of eyebrows wherever you go..." he frowns. "'cept maybe France."

The slight humour raises Castiel's spirits a little.

"I'm not telling you this to do you down." Bobby contines. "I tried telling Dean when he called me, but he's stubborn as a mule with a hammer in its skull, there's no reasoning with him. Not about family..." Bobby speaks of John as much as he does of Castiel, and the teenager senses this. "But...I've always tried to look out for John's boys, where I can...and that includes you now as well."

"Thank you, sir." Castiel's ingrained politeness answers for him.

Bobby huffs his amusement. "Call me Bobby, son. Everybody does."

Castiel resolves to do just that.

(-*-)

Dean and Sam are waiting for them in the corridor just a few metres from John Winchester's hospital room. Dean shoots a questioning glance first at Bobby, then at Castiel; he's met with stubborn will from the old man and reassurance from his...well, from Castiel. They've yet to attempt to label themselves, and to call him a 'boyfriend' would seem all too strange given everything that's happened to them.

"You haven't gone in yet?" Bobby asks.

"No. We were waiting for you." Dean mutters.

Bobby walks past him to the door, patting Dean on the back in a silent gesture of understanding as he goes.

They file into the room and Castiel's first real look at his father is taken in the small space between Sam and Dean. John Winchester lies in the crisp white hospital bed, skin waxy and tinged yellow with jaundice, the purple grooves under his eyes make him look half dead, and Castiel is shocked at how small he looks, gaunt cheeked and hollow eyed.

"Hey Dad." Sam is the first to speak, and John looks at him, mouth twitching into a half smile.

"Sammy, hey..." he looks up. "Dean, I'm so sorry...dragging you all the way out here..."

"It's fine Dad." Dean looks ashen, shocked by the sight of his father. "It's you, I wanted to come."

John looks incredibly relieved at that.

"And..." he glances past his sons, eyes landing on Castiel. "Novak's boy..." he licks his dry lips. "But I guess you're...you're mine, huh?"

"Yes..." Casitel moves forwards a little, and Dean's hand finds its way into his.

John looks at him, almost awed.

"Imagine that." He breathes. "You've got a lot of your mom in you...lucky thing. She was a great lady." He wets his lips again. "First time in rehab and she came out clean...I guess she did that for you."

"Maybe." Castiel murmurs, Dean squeezes his hand gently.

"Dad..." Dean cuts in. "Bobby told us what the doctor said..."

John closes his eyes for a moment before looking up at his son. "Nothing more than I deserve, right? Treating you like I did..."

"Don't say that." Dean's jaw tenses, a hallmark of emotions being kept in check. "Dad..."

"No, I..." John clears his throat awkwardly. "I stole practically your whole life Dean, just so I could drink mine away, so that I could end up here..." he gestures with a hand made cumbersome by IV drip wire and the heart monitor clip. "Then you threw me out and...and I just stopped, just like that, least until the night I came in here..." his face clenches in disgust. "I guess I threw it all up before it could get into me, but that's what you get for drinking with a fucking ulcer." John shakes his head. "Hurt like hell and I didn't stop."

Dean winces, and Castiel feels for him, for the discovery that his father's sobriety was so short lived, a technicality.

"So...I'm glad you're here, Dean, and you Sammy because...because I'm sorry..." Tears fall down his wasted face and Castiel looks down at the pale green blanket on the bed. "Because I can't make it right...and I didn't stop...and I was such a terrible...fucking, Dad that I thought you'd leave me to die here, on my own...and I wouldn't've blamed you for it...I really wouldn't've, because a man that beats his sons and...drinks away all their money and...and kills his wife?" this last comes with a broken sob, the word snapped in two by it. "He deserves to die like that...I wish to God I'd died when that ulcer burst." He heaves a strangled sob. "I wish I'd been the one taken in that fire...not...God, Mary..."

Nobody moves for a long second, as John crumples up, the grief he'd tried to drown washing over him in an almost Biblical flood. Then Dean surprises everyone, even, and perhaps especially, himself.

He takes a step towards the bed, leans down, and wraps his arms around his father.

A second later, Sam rounds the bed, holding him from the other side.

And as John sobs between them, Dean reaches a hand back for Cas, and Sam beckons to Bobby, and they crowd round, putting their arms around John's son's as they try to hold their father together.

(-*-)

The doctor comes to see them later, as they sit in the scratchy felt chairs outside of John's room, letting the sick man take some much needed rest.

"Mr Singer?" The doctor addresses Bobby first. "I'm Dr. Lordstrom, I was asked to speak to you as part of a surgical consultation."

"What kind of surgery?" Dean asks bluntly, he's sitting with his arms around Castiel, leaning against the teenagers shoulder. When the doctor looks at him he straightens up. "I thought there was no chance of getting surgery."

"Well, in his current state your father is...unviable as a transplant patient." The doctor says tactfully. Dean knows what he means of course, that a sloppy old drunk isn't worthy of new organs when he's screwed up his own.

"But..." the doctor continues. "Now that you, the relatives, have come forward, there's a chance that one of you might be a match."

Silence greets this proclamation.

"A match how?" Bobby asks eventually.

"Well, you see..." the doctor explains, clearly in his element. "One of you, as his children could be a tissue match. As such you could give your father one of your kidneys, and although operating on one kidney isn't ideal, it would drastically improve your father's condition."

"But his liver's shot, right?" Dean puts in.

"Yes...but, by taking part of another, healthy liver, again, hopefully finding a match in one of you. We could offer your father enough of a working liver to keep him alive and stable."

Dean looks at Dr. Lorstrom.

"I'm guessing...if we do that, then he can never drink again?"

"Obviously that would not be the best idea, with only a partial liver." The Doctor admits.

"How long would it take to test us?" Sam asks suddenly.

"Well...I could take samples now if you're agreeable?"

"I am." Sam says quickly.

"Sam..." Bobby takes his arm. "Think about this."

"He's my dad...we have to at least try." Sam murmurs.

Dean takes a deep breath.

"Ok...yeah, me too." He seems surprised at himself.

"And me." Castiel says softly. "Check me, too."

Dean takes his hand, Castiel squeezes it around Dean's fingers.

"I'm sure." He says pre-emptively.

And he knows that Bobby understands the double meaning to his words, just as well as Dean does.


	30. Chapter 30

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. I would be ecstatic to sell more copies _

_Wow, this took a long time to write. I was surprised at the way it went, mainly because I was going to wait it out for a while...apparently everyone else had different plans. _

Dr Lordstom puts a rush on their tests, so they'll know in a day's time if any of them is a match to John's tissue type.

In the car on the way home, Dean is silent, tense as he grips the wheel. On the return journey Castiel rides in the impala, and Sam goes with Bobby. Castiel wonders what the older man has to say to Sam that can't be said in earshot of either himself or Dean. Whatever it is, Castiel already trusts Bobby implicitly, his words with Sam must be important.

Once they're back at the house, Castiel notices that he can still smell the hospital on his clothing, the scent meshed into his hair. He takes a quick shower, and when he goes back downstairs he finds that all three men have changed their clothes, as if they too couldn't stand the antiseptic stink on themselves.

Bobby fixes them burgers for dinner, served with a greasy basket of fries and then pie for dessert. Dean eats mechanically, Sam picks at his plate of food, and Castiel looks at hi, wondering if he'll be sick if he eats even one bite.

After a while of chewing and scuffling plates, Dean looks up at Castiel, then down at the teenagers untouched food. He reaches over, picking up one of Castiel's fries and holding it up, raising an eyebrow.

Castiel leans over and bites the end of it, taking the fry from Dean's fingers.

After that he starts to eat his meal, avoiding any other glances at Dean, but checking once to see if Sam and Bobby are disturbed by them both. Neither man shows any disquiet.

After dinner, Bobby retires to his den and Sam goes to his bedroom to read. Dean goes to have a shower in the tiny bathroom that their room is attached to. Castiel undresses, retaining his vest and underwear and climbs into bed, waiting for Dean to come back. When he does, towelling off his hair perfunctorily and climbing into bed in his undershirt and boxers, Castiel curls up next to him and tries to let go of consciousness.

(-*-)

Dean can't sleep, he's been tossing and turning sleepily for hours, and he's stripped his shirt off because he's too hot, then bunched the sheets up because he's cold...nothing works. And he keeps glancing at Castiel, sleeping in his vest and underwear and feeling guilty at the potential disturbance to the teenagers slumber.

Eventually he must doze, because the next thing he knows, Castiel is getting up, though it's still night.

"Bathroom." He mutters, leaving Dean on the bed and padding to the door to the closet sized en suite.

"Sure..." Dean rolls onto his face, then onto his back, glaring at the ceiling.

Castiel is gone for a while, so long that Dean starts to drift, not sleeping but blanking out the room in frustration.

"Dean?"

Dean opens heavy lids and the light from the bathroom plays over his face, a yellow lance in the shadow. Castiel's silhouette is dark against it, and at first Dean thinks he's leaning in the doorway, but then he gets used to the half light and realises that he's standing awkwardly by the door.

"Cas? What's wrong?" He lifts himself a little on one arm, the bed sheet shifting down over his chest, catching at the waist of his boxers.

"Nothing." Castiel murmurs. He steps forwards, crossing the space between bathroom and bed on silent, bare feet. Cas gets up onto the mattress, sitting beside Dean's naked legs.

Dean's eyes adjust to the dark and he sees that Castiel is wearing his shirt, the blue denim one Dean'd put on after they came home from the hospital. Large and unbuttons.

That's all he's wearing.

"Cas..." Dean backs up a little but Castiel puts one gentle hand on his thigh.

"I though...after today...you might...want to." He twitches the sheet aside and his hot fingers touch the top of Dean's leg, and despite himself the older man feels an answering heat rise in his groin. "That you might need it..."

"You don't have to..."

"I want to." Castiel slips up the bed, one toned thigh slipping between Dean's strong ones, rubbing against his cotton clad cock. "I want you."

He lowers himself slowly, sinuously, body fetching up against Dean's in a soft slide of gorgeous milky skin. And Dean had forgotten he could be like that, that Castiel was once so redolent of sex and lust.

"Cas..." Dean puts a hand on Castiel's waist to steady the teenager, to keep him slightly away. "You wanted to wait...you said..."

"Michael said...and I agreed." Castiel leans and inhales the side of Dean's neck. "But I want to give you this...I want you so much..." his voice is dark and breathy, and Dean shifts under him, rubbing against Castiel's thigh.

"Castiel." Dean moves away, looking Castiel in the eye. The teenager holds his gaze for a second, then drops it shyly to Dean's naked chest, the Castiel Dean knows shining through.

"I'm not lying." Castiel whispers. "And I do want to." He puts his hands on Dean's shoulders. "You can't sleep, you feel bad...and I want to make you feel better." He kisses Dean gently. "And I like sex Dean, I do...and I love you, so much." He kisses him again, less gentle, more hungry. "You keep saying I'm not your brother, not like that...so, prove it to me." He rocks his hips with Dean's needily.

Dean doesn't touch him any more, but he doesn't move away either.

Castiel takes Dean's hand and runs it from his waist, down the curve of his back, to the soft rise of his ass. Dean's fingers slip into the crease of their own accord, and a quiet moan escapes his throat when he discovers the slickness there. Clearly Castiel was busy in the bathroom.

Castiel sighs happily when Dean rolls him onto his back, settling between the teenager's spread thighs and pushing the baggy shirt off of his shoulders. Castiel leans up to kiss Dean's chest, bending in that ridiculous, sinewy way of his to kiss and nip at the older man's stomach, hands caressing Dean's thighs as the larger man shivers over him.

"Cas..." Dean pins Castiel to the mattress, his sinewy, wriggling body spread in an open invitation.

Castiel, for all his seduction, all his ease, still goes still the moment Dean presses between his legs. They share a glance, neither sure that this is going to work, that it's going to feel like it did before.

Then Dean pushes forwards, and Castiel closes his eyes, letting his head fall back, small white teeth sinking into his lower lip as the head of Dean's cock flirts with the very pucker of his entrance, which stretches as it opens to him, pushing in and in and in, until Castiel lets out a hoarse groan and shudders, his chest flushing red and his cock producing a shaky spasm of pre-come.

Dean shifts one of Cas's thighs slightly wider, sinking in just a little deeper, a drop of sweat slides down his back, his whole body throbbing with heat and pleasure.

"Oh God..." the word breaks in the middle, and Dean strokes an unsteady hand up Castiel's chest, to his neck and up to cup his face. "You okay?"

Castiel opens his eyes lazily, trembles as he puts his hands on Dean's damp back.

"I think...I'm gonna come." His voice is unsteady, strained. "I actually might..." he cries out when Dean shifts slightly. "Ohfuckfuckfuck...fu-ck..." his body twitches and he clutches at Dean desperately. "Dean..."

And then Castiel shakes, and Dean feels his body squeeze down on his cock, splashes of pearly fluid flying over Castiel's chest as groans, the furthest licks of come landing near his pebbled nipples, painting over the flush of his skin.

"Ugh..." Castiel's hand reaches up, pulling lightly at Dean's hair. "Oh God...too much." He notices Dean's torn expression, touches the older man's cheek. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know...if I should be doing this." Dean's voice carries the strain of a man caught between intense pleasure and intense anxiety. His hips twitch forwards and he winces, feeling Cas's channel flex around him.

"We can stop." Castiel whispers.

Dean pulls out of him with a wince and a groan, lying down beside Castiel's lax body.

"I'm sorry." The teenager murmurs.

"Hey." Dean turns on his side, puts his arm around him. "It's not your fault."

"I just..." Castiel strokes Dean's back, "I kept thinking about that first time, with you...at school." He presses his face to the curve of Dean's neck. "And it...felt so...good. Not just hot but actually...good, like it was right, not dirty or forbidden just... It made me feel better...made me feel like someone actually gave a crap about what went on under my skin." He pulls away from Dean sitting up and contemplating the mess on his stomach and chest. "I just wanted to do that for you...make you feel...good."

Dean is silent for a long moment.

"Tell me about it."

Castiel blinks at him.

"I mean it...tell me about..." Dean takes a breath, leans up and shifts Castiel up and onto his lap, lying back down and looking up at him, hands stroking Castiel's thighs. "Tell be about the second time."

Castiel's eyes flare again, and he knows where this is heading. He wets his dry lips and Dean gazes up at him, sweat sheened and painted with come, every inch a lover.

"The second time..." Castiel touches Dean's cock, lightly tracing one thick vein and making the older man shiver and twitch. "The second time...I think I was in control, not letting you kiss me for a while...telling you what to do...no one ever let me take control before."

He looks down at Dean, a mixture of desire and open, vulnerable affection on his young face.

"The first time you came inside me...I knew I'd never be able to stop." He shifts a little, fingers tracing circles on Dean's stomach. "I'd keep coming back for more."

Dean's hands hold Castiel's hips, the teenager lifts himself up, and then Dean's pulling him down onto his still very present arousal, and Castiel's moan is almost like relief. He's so sensitive inside now, that each brush of Dean there is almost too much. Castiel's control is practically nonexistent, and he rides Dean with his head tipped forwards, his whole back shaking as the sweetest, laboured sounds escape his mouth.

When Dean rolls them over, laying Castiel down so that the almost exhausted teen can hold onto him, the change in angle reaches Cas's prostate, and his nails dig into Dean's shoulders as he moans. Castiel's whole body trembles like Dean is a livewire he's trying to hang on to, and each stroke sends him into another uncontrollable spasm. Dean is panting over him, his sweat falling and mingling with the teenagers own. And this, this is what he's wanted, only now does Dean see it. That all he wanted was Castiel, just like this, forever. That for all he wants Castiel in his home and under his protection, Cas was never destined to be his brother. At that thought h feels a white hot dart of pleasure in its absolute – sensation and joy.

All Dean can see is his lover's face, breaking apart in ecstasy, and when Castiel comes again it's with a jolt that sends him limp. Dean presses their bodies closer, his face finding the damp hollow of Castiel's throat, their hips flush and Dean's thrusts limited to the briefest length, hardly allowing his cock to leave Castiel's suffocatingly hot body.

Castiel's hand finds its way to Dean's hair, rubbing at his scalp affectionately, his other arm sliding slowly to embrace the older man's flexing back. Every now and then, Castiel whimpers, stimulated beyond the point of orgasm, tender and bursting at the seams with heat and pleasure. He can feel every part of Dean; the soft skin of his stomach where it touches his own, the rub of Dean's forehead against his throat, Dean's hands branding his hips with scorching heat, the thickness of the shaft inside of him, its plump head; a bead of pre-come falls inside of him, like molten wax running up into his channel, burning beautifully. Castiel clenches around Dean in his third spasm of heightened pleasure, an orgasm in its rawest sense.

Dean comes like that, wrapped up in Castiel's exhausted embrace, pressed so close that his world fills up with Castiel.

He falls asleep on his lover's chest.


	31. Chapter 31

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. Hard copies are now available, just follow the link. _

_Also, anyone who read and liked 'Me and Mine' already – good news, this story looks set to get the full novel treatment as well. _

Dean wakes up slowly, stretching before his eyes are fully open, there's really no need to move, his body tells him. There's a soft sheet over him, his head is buried in a pillow, and best of all, there's a warm, familiar body lying against his side. Dean shifts his head to one side.

"Cas..." He tugs lightly at the body with the arm he has thrown over it.

Castiel clears his throat sleepily, nuzzles into the pillow.

Dean lets himself slip back into sleep. At least right now, everything is fine.

He's woken again later, and the room is lighter when he opens his eyes. He's lying on his side, and Castiel...Castiel's breath runs over Dean's back a fraction of a second before his lips make contact. Dean sighs, one hand tangling in the sheets at the unexpected sensation. It feels so good and yet so strange to be pleasured like this, the gentle kisses working their way across his shoulders and then down his spine.

He rolls onto his front at Castiel's gentle coaxing, feeling the teenage settle between his legs as he rubs his warm hands into the tense muscles of Dean's back. The older man outright moans at the first tentative workings of the teen's hands, and he goes pliant, feeling himself relax into the bed, even as his hips rub restlessly into the mattress.

Castiel's hands trace lower, firmly moulding to the muscles of Dean's lower back and kneading them loose. Dean groans into his pillow, and Cas takes this as permission to move lower, fingers tickling down the outside of Dean's hips, sliding along the crease where buttock meets thigh. Dean's body hitches forwards, rubbing his cock into the threadbare sheets. Castiel sweeps his hands up, following the dip and rise of Dean's spine up to his shoulders, leaning up on his knees to reach.

Dean is already panting, when Cas's cock, hard and weeping, brushes over the cleft of his ass and rubs against his perineum.

Dean groans, legs opening mindlessly to the feeling of wet, soft flesh pressing against that sensitive spot. Castiel's breath hitches and his hands travel back to Dean's waist.

Dimly, both men are aware that this isn't something they've ever touched on before, but Dean's blood is rushing, Castiel is drunk on the power of his position, and as one they both press together again. Dean ruts against the sheets, feeling the smooth touch of Castiel's erection between his legs. The tip of him nudges against the base of Dean's cock, rubbing at the crinkled, dark hair there.

Casitel whimpers, holding Dean's hips tightly with one hand, the other reach helplessly behind himself, slipping a finger into his loosened entrance.

Dean recognises his lover's relived grunt at the penetration, and the knowledge that Castiel is pleasuring himself pushes him that closer to the knife edge of orgasm.

"Cas..." he manages to choke out, pushing back.

Castiel moans brokenly, and then there's thick, wet, heat searing between Dean's legs, wetting the sheets he's rubbing against. He shudders, feeling the nudging of Cas's cock becoming softer and less insistent as he spills in a series of short spasms.

Dean lies face down on the bed, the sheet under his groin wet through, delicious warmth crawling up his spine. Castiel lies down next to him, one hand petting Dean's back shyly.

"That was new." The teenager mutters.

Dean grunts softly, moving closer to him tiredly.

"I didn't plan it." Castiel assures him.

"S'ok...it was good." Dean rolls onto his back, wincing at the tacky sheet as it touches him. Castiel lies against Dean's chest, sighing against his skin. "Next time...you know, if you want...you can..."

Castiel swallows.

"I haven't before." He mutters.

Dean huffs nonchalantly. "Me either." He runs a hand down Castiel's back. "It could be good though."

"It is." Castiel breathes gently against Dean's nipple, relishing the hitch in the other man's breath as he does so. "But right now...we should get up."

Dean's face hardens almost instantly. "Right, the hospital."

"Yeah." Castiel says regretfully. "Big day."

Dean slides away and climbs out of bed. "I feel like this should have happened before...or after." He sighs. "Any day that wasn't..."

"Hey." Castiel follows him into the bathroom, watching as Dean starts the shower up. "Whatever happens today...it's not about us being together."Castiel puts an arm around Dean's waist and rests his head against the other man's shoulder. "But I'm glad it happened, and you know I'll still be with you tonight...whatever happens today." He tightens his arm around Dean.

Dean squeezes him back.

(-*-)

Showered and dressed, Dean and Castiel go downstairs to the kitchen, where Bobby is holding court over a table of battered cereal boxes.

Sam glances at them, his cheeks pinkened, then he picks up his bowl of orange corn boulders and heads into the living room.

Castiel dips his head awkwardly and pulls out a chair, pouring himself a bowl of breakfast cereal.

"You two might want to be more careful about where you do that from now on." Bobby tells them sternly.

Dean says nothing, but stands stiffly by the table, eyes wandering to the living room door.

"Walls here are pretty thin, Dean." Bobby sighs. "Might be best if you talked to him."

"Ok." Dean pats Castiel's shoulder, then goes into the living room, finding Sam sitting in front of the TV, watching the news. He feels suddenly very guilty about leaving his brother to fend for himself while he spent time with Castiel. Even more so that Sam had heard them, god only knew what he was thinking.

"Sam, I'm really sorry about last night..."

"It's fine." Sam says quickly, eyes fixed on an election update.

"No offence, but I wouldn't ever want to hear what you got up to with a girl...and this is a little different...so..."

"It's ok." Sam mutters, stabbing at his saturated cereal. "I just...I didn't think it would feel like that. Hearing you."

Dean sits down on the saggy brown couch beside his brother.

"How did it feel?"

"Weird." Sam glances at him apologetically. "I mean...I get that with you guys it's...pretty weird right now but...I thought it wouldn't matter that much...It's not like you two have never done it...and I've heard you when you've brought guys home before..."

"When?" Dean feels a jab of guilt at that.

"Just before...when you were still in high school I guess." Sam shrugs. "And yeah, it's weird and embarrassing to hear...but..."

"This was worse?" Dean supplies.

"It was different." Sam says quietly. "He's..."

"Yeah...I know." Dean sighs. "Believe me."

"So..." Sam gnaws his lip anxiously. "I kind of thought about it...and..." he sighs. "I want to go to college, by myself...just...away, you know?"

"Sam..." Dean shouldn't be surprised by the way that makes him feel, sort of like someone's peeling his heart out of his chest.

"Everyone leaves their family some time." Sam mutters. "And...I think I need some time to get used to you two being...a two...and me being, the 'other one'."

"You're never going to be just 'the other one'."

"Yeah, I am." Sam nudges him. "And that's ok...you need to have someone who isn't me, and it's...weird...but it won't always be." He sighs. "But I think right now...we're too close...Dean, you're practically..." He stops.

Dean feels his heart come away from his insides and drop like a stone.

"Practically my dad." Sam says quietly.

Dean pulls Sam close with an arm over his shoulder, squeezing him gently. He almost opens his mouth, almost says something, anything, but instead he rests his forehead on the top of Sam's head, and they just sit there, being close.

Sam closes his eyes, trying to memorize the feeling of being the centre of someone's world.

Then, he lets it go.

(-*-)

Dr Lordstrom comes to meet them in a small consultation room near to where John is resting. He has a thin cardboard file in his hands, and Dean thinks that he has never been as nervous as he is right now. Not even with Cas last night, because this is his Dad's life, and he has no idea whether he should help to save it. He wants to, but then, he's always wanted to give John a second chance, a fourth chance, never a last chance. Not until he'd kicked him out.

And look what that had done.

He was even less enthusiastic at the idea of Sam losing a kidney and some of his liver to their father. Sammy was still his younger brother, for all that he was almost an adult, and Dean didn't know if he could stand by and let it happen.

And as for Castiel...

Dean wouldn't admit it, not to anybody, but there's still a part of him, the same part that still believes in his dad...that hopes the doctors file will tell him that Castiel is someone else's son, someone else's brother...and that everything they've gone through can be seen as a tragic but ultimately useful bonding experience.

Hope is a trick the devil plays on you. That was a lesson Dean had learnt early in life.

"I have some good news." Lordstrom says, flicking open his file and scanning the single page inside. "One of you, is a match to your father's tissue type."

"Who?" Dean asks sharply.

"You are, Mr Winchester." Dr Lordstrom's mouth curves in a sincere smile.

Dean feels the weight of this decision settle squarely on his shoulders, glad that it is him and not Sam or Cas that will have to bear this burden.

"I'd like to speak to you alone, if I may?" the doctor asks.

Sam squeezes Dean's hand and Castiel hugs him, a quick, tight embrace that makes Dean's heart bump his ribs and causes Dr Lordstrom to look away awkwardly. But for now Dean doesn't care.

When Sam, Bobby and Castiel have left the room, Dean looks at the doctor and swallows the bitterness at the back of his throat. He can do this, for Sam if for nothing else.

"So...how soon can you operate on us?" Dean asks.

"Before we discuss that..." Dr Lordstrom looks decidedly less professionally pleased and more than a little sheepish. "I have something I'd like to talk to you about?"

Dean feels a dart of panic, please let this not be about Castiel, please let the inevitable disgust and misery wait at least a day. Just one.

"It's about the results from the testing..." Dr Lordstrom's fingers tighten on his file. "I assume you know that you have a half brother?"

Dean feels the tension leech from his spine.

"Cas is Dad's, with another woman."

The doctor meets Dean's eyes solemnly.

"I was talking about Sam."

Dean blinks, almost seeing the words as they come towards him, worming into his skin and sharply upwards into his chest. They sit there, hard and cold and undeniable.

"What?"

Dr Lordstrom opens the file again.

"I'm only telling you because...well, it places any guardianship you might need to take of him if you father doesn't recover, in jeopardy." He says apologetically. "But, Sam and you share the same maternal DNA...but you have different fathers."

"That's not..." Dean thinks of their mother, of the brief, flimsy memories he has of her; kind and smiling, sweet and soft. "That's not possible."

"I'm afraid it is." The doctor looks pensive. "You and Castiel share the same paternity, Sam does not." He looks at Dean's pale face. "If you need some time to think about..."

"No." Dean looks at him. "We can get on with the surgery, as soon as possible." His face darkens. "Don't even think about telling anyone else."

"I can assure you I won't." The doctor retreats nervously, and Dean feels slightly bad for his behaviour.

He takes a moment to collect himself, and then he steps outside to see Sam, Castiel and Bobby.

"The doc kind of ran out of there." Bobby says oddly. "Anything wrong?"

"No." Dean smiles at him, then looks at Sam, standing next to Castiel and looking equally as worried.

And it's easy.

He hadn't expected it to be this easy, after all that had come of his and Castiel's discovery, but it is.

Dean looks at Sam, and see his brother. Almost eighteen years, and nothing's going to change that, or lessen it.

"We should go and see Dad now." Dean tells them, he looks up, and catches Bobby looking at him, a kind of sadness lying in his eyes.

Dean motions Sam and Cas towards John's room, then catches Bobby's arm, waiting for the teenagers to pass out of earshot.

"You knew, didn't you?" He murmurs.

"I had suspicions." Bobby, to his credit, still manages to look Dean in the eye.

"But..." Dean glances after Sam and Castiel. "I can understand why mom might have...I mean, Dad was hardly ever there...and when he was I bet she wanted him gone."

"Mary loved him." Bobby says, brows drawing together. "You don't stay with someone that lost, for that long without a damn good reason...and your mom loved your dad more than was probably wise."

"But who..." Again, Dean glances around. "Who's Sam's father?"

Bobby shrugs, a defeated slump to his shoulders. "Some idjit." He mutters.

Dean looks at him, and wonders what his life would have been like without Bobby there to help. All the times Dean had had to make a run for it in the middle of the night, because someone looked like they were ready to call in social services. The times he'd needed money, a place to stay, advice...and when he'd left home that one, stupid time...Bobby had been the one to keep track of Sam and John, had been there to help them out.

Losing Mary had ripped a hole into John, and Dean, even Sam, too young to remember, had grown to miss his mother.

Dean had never thought to look at his father's oldest friend, had never seen the heartbreak under his gruff practicality.

Sam appears at the end of the hallway.

"Dean...Dad's awake."

Dean looks at Bobby.

"I think I'm just gonna...wait in the car." Bobby mutters.

"Bobby..."

"This is a family thing boy..." Bobby waves him off. "I'd best stay out of the way."

Dean watches the only man he's ever considered a real parent walk away down the corridor. He's not angry, he doesn't understand, but he's not angry.

There'll be time to figure it all out later, to pick up the scattered mess of their family and try to piece it together so it makes sense.

Once he's made sure his father will be around to see it.

Dean goes to John's room, and if it's possible his father actually looks worse than he had done before, sallow and weak as anything.

"Hey, Dean." John lifts himself up a little, propping himself more firmly on his pillows. Castiel and Sam stand by the side of the bed, in front of the window.

"Dad..." Dean touches the side of the bed. "They got the results back...turns out, I'm a match."

"The doc told me." John says, and Dean doesn't detect any relief in his voice at all, only a kind of finality. "Dean...don't do it."

"Dad!" Sam leaps forwards, hand going out to clasp John's. "Don't say that."

John's eyes fix on Dean's.

"We both know I've been a crappy father..." he begins.

"That doesn't mean you deserve to die." Dean insists.

"But it does mean that...maybe this is a chance I don't deserve." John replies, gathering his strength. "Dean...if this had been Sam, I'd be withholding consent for the surgery...if it was Castiel...well, then I'd have no right to expect it of him...but you?" John looks at him. "You're a better man than me, Dean...you have been since you were ten." He raises a humourless twist of a smile. "So, I'm asking you, not to make this mistake, man to man...don't waste yourself on me."

"You're my father." Dean says, and it's the truth, and a reason all in one.

"You're my son." John says, with equal seriousness. "And I don't want this for you."

Dean looks down at the man who'd shaped his life by stealing from it, reduced now to a frail body in a sick bed. He's never loved him more fiercely than he does now. He's never felt that John loved him, until right this second.

Dr Lordstrom enters the room, a nurse at his side with some paperwork in her hands.

"Alright, now if we can just have your signature..."

"No." Dean looks John in the eye. "I want to do this...it's...Dad..."

John slides a hand across the blankets, taking Dean's hand in his own. Sam holds the other, squeezing tightly as he starts to cry.

"I want you boys to be there for each other...no matter what happens." John murmur, fingers surprisingly strong as they hold the hands of his sons. "I'd never forgive myself if you lost each other because of me."

"Mr Winchester..." Dr Lordstrom begins.

"I'm refusing surgery." John looks up at them and glares. "You can add a DNR to that as well."

"I strongly suggest..." the doctor begins.

Castiel crosses the room, arms outstretched, and ushers the doctor and nurse from the room, closing the door behind the three of them.

Inside the hospital room, Dean and Sam cling to the hands of the father they've been missing all their lives. John realises what he's been missing in all the years he'd drank himself out of his son's lives.

He thanks God that he's allowed to witness it now, while he still has the chance.


	32. Chapter 32

_As usual you can follow me at JollySnidge on twitter – and please check out my novel on my profile page. Hard copies are now available, just follow the link. _

_Also, anyone who read and liked 'Me and Mine' already – good news, this story looks set to get the full novel treatment as well. _

_However, this does mean that the fic has to wrap up, so that I can focus on writing what happens next, as in, the second half of the novel. Therefore I've decided to make this the last chapter, to give some resolution to the Dean/Cas plot so that I can start on the novel and get into what happens when Sam goes to college and after etc etc. So follow me on twitter if you want updates on that._

_Really sorry if you think it's rushed, but I have coursework, and plus the novel...it's a little much._

Dean finds himself at the front of the room, unsure as to how he got there.

All the faces there are turned towards him, watching and waiting. The minister coughs politely next to him, urging him on before the service over runs. It's a pretty sparse turnout; Castiel and Sam front-left, Bobby and Pastor Jim front-right, a couple of rehab buddies, bar patrons and owners make up the next two rows. Then nothing but empty seats.

Dean looks down at his notes, then back up at the small group.

Sam is holding tight to Castiel's hand, and both teenagers look up at him. Bobby inclines his head in encouragement.

"John Winchester was..." Dean looks down at the paper again, blinks once to clear his eyes, and swallows the lump of cold clay that fills his throat whenever he tries to speak about his father.

"A lot of people would say...that the only decent thing my Dad ever did, was die." Dean starts, disregarding his previous thoughts on the matter, hastily scribbled down for this very moment. "John Winchester, disappointed a lot of people, his friends and his family, until no one expected anything from him, but more let downs, and more drinking."

He looks up, finds a spot over the heads of the funeral party, and fixes on it.

"My Dad, changed the way my life went, almost as soon as I was born...he was never around, and I got used to that. And somewhere in that time, I got a new baby brother, and then my Dad left...and when he came back, it was to cause the accident that lost me and Sam our mom."

He blinks again, stubbornly trying to clear his vision.

"I took care of John most of my life, and I tried to help him, and set him straight. I think there are a lot of people who would have given up...but I guess I was just dumb enough to hang on...and I'm glad I did...because you see, my Dad, gave me some of the best things in my life. He gave me Sam, my brother...who I don't think I'd make sense without...and John's friends became the closest thing I ever had to a family. I wouldn't turn on Bobby, or Jim, for anything...Dad is also the reason I wound up finding the person who I want to spend the rest of my life with."

Dean glances down for the first time, finding first Sam's shiny eyes, and then fixing on Castiel's.

"I wouldn't have any of that, if I hadn't had John Winchester as a father."

Sam is blinking back tears, and Bobby wordlessly extends a hand across the aisle, offering a tissue and almost staring in surprise when Sam takes his hand instead, squeezing it tightly.

"So...today is the day I tell you all the best things about my dad. About why we're worse off for losing him." Dean rests his hand on the lectern, gripping it for support. "And I'd like to say to you...here's to John...for coming through when it mattered most."

The crowd rumbles its agreement, and Dean is allowed, finally, to go back to his seat. He can't feel his legs properly, and it's a relief when he's back at his seat, Sam and Castiel moving aside to let him sit between them. Castiel's hand slides into his, and Sam bolters him from the other side.

The rest of the service passes fairly quickly, it's a cheap, cheerless affair, the coffin at the front little more than varnished plywood, topped with a simple wreath of carnations and greenery. There hadn't been a lot of money around, even thought Bobby and pastor Jim had both pitched in to help.

Bobby gets up to speak about John when he was a young man, before his marriage, before Dean was born. There was a small window of time in which John hadn't been an alcoholic, or rather, in which he had been a sober, potential alcoholic. Bobby talks about John and Mary's wedding, and Dean can almost see them, young and happy.

He wonders if Sam will ever find out that Bobby is his father, and hopes that if it does happen, one day, that Bobby is still alive. It would be too much now, but, maybe later, once times has passed, Sam might be ready to let a new father into his life.

Neither Sam, nor Castiel get up to speak. Castiel hadn't felt it appropriate, and Sam hadn't known what he'd say. But they both keep a firm hold on him, tethering Dean to the present, to the physical location of his father's coffin, as if afraid he'll blow away.

When the curtains on their mechanised runner, start to close around the coffin, and everyone begins to get up and file away, Dean has the horrible impulse not to leave his father alone. That they can't all just leave this place, and let John stay behind. It seems negligent. Fortunately, Sam and Castiel each take his hand, leading him away, Bobby and Jim bring up the rear of their little party, as the others disappear back to their cars.

Outside there are a few bouquets, a wreath, all fairly cheap and bedraggled seeming. But Dean is glad they at least brought something, that his Dad hadn't departed the world unmourned. He wouldn't wish that on anyone.

They get into the impala, Bobby in the driver's seat, Dean, Cas and Sam in the back. As they drive away, Sam waves to Pastor Jim, but Dean is motionless between the two teenagers.

"I can come over tomorrow." Bobby tells him shortly. "Help you clear out your Dad's things." Bobby was staying in a hotel near to their apartment for the week of the funeral.

"That'd be great." Sam answers for Dean.

Castiel puts an arm around Dean and lets him lean his head onto his shoulder. Sam leans against Dean, as if they're all suffering from cold alone, and not grief.

Back at the apartment, John's absence is like a yawning chasm in the scruffy carpet. All the time that dean had spent by his father's hospital bed, trying to keep him comfortable, cramming twenty odd years of father-son time into a few short days, he hadn't paused to consider what it would be like back here, once John was no long around.

Sam orders Chinese take-out and the four of them eat, sitting on the couch and the floor in an awkward circle.

When Bobby leaves he squeezes Dean once, in a tight, awkward hug. Sam puts his arms around Bobby without prompting, and for a few scant seconds the older man looks on the edge of crumpling to his emotions, as he pats Sam's shaggy brown hair affectionately.

Then the three of them are left alone in the apartment.

Castiel retires to Dean's bedroom, leaving him and Sam to talk. Of course, they don't end up talking, they just stand where Bobby left them at the front door, Sam's arms around Dean, Dean bending down to hug his brother, neither wanting to let go until it's absolutely necessary.

When Sam finally detaches himself, sniffling, to go to his own bedroom, Dean is beyond exhausted. He finds Castiel sitting on his bed, their bed, and almost without thinking he lays down on it, tucking his face into the curve of Castiel's stomach. The teenager runs his fingers over Dean's cheek.

"It's over now." He whispers. "All over now."

Dean gradually rouses himself and he and Castiel curl up on the bed together. Slowly, Castiel kisses life back into Dean's lips, numbed from the moment he spoke his eulogy until now. After a while, warm and soothed, Dean takes a breath and lets it out slowly. Castiel sighs beside his ear.

"You think Sam's ok?" Castiel asks.

"Honestly, no." Dean murmurs.

As one, almost as if they'd pre-arranged it, both men get up off of the bed and go next door.

Sam is lying bunched up on his bedspread, a pillow over his face to muffle the sounds he makes as he cries. He looks up at them, ashamed and red eyed as they enter. Dean motions for Sam to shuffle over, and after a few moments all three of them are arranged on the bed, arms around each other in comfort.

John Winchester's sons, by blood and by upbringing, together, finally.


	33. Chapter 33

_**Sorry to anyone expecting a new chapter Just a little announcement.**_

_**This story, with extra content and improved presentation, is available as an ebook, for under £1, on amazon (com and uk). There's a link in my profile, and I'd be so happy if you bought it and enjoyed it. **_

_**The money goes towards my education, and also to help get me a plane ticket to meet the woman I love.**_

_**Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the fic **_


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